Two Journeys

Well, I am really excited about this message today, next week too. We're going to spend, God willing, two weeks on spiritual gifts. And as I think about our church, I think about our needs, where we're at as a congregation, I really circle this is one of the main issues that we need to attend to. You know, I have an almost five-month-old daughter. On the 28th of this month, the last day of this month, she's going to be five months and there's nothing I can do to slow her down. She just keeps growing and growing. And she goes through these sweet little stages and we just can't hold on to them. We'd love to hold on to them, but we can't. But inside her little body, all of these systems are working: Her lungs and her circulatory system and her mind and her eyes and her... And she's just watching all the time and learning and growing, and as each part of her body does its work, she's just growing physically stronger and stronger.

And so it is with you as you sit there in the pew today. You also have physical systems that are working. You're looking at me with your eyes, your eyes are doing their specialized job. Your ears are doing their specialized job. Your mind is totally focused on the word of God, right. Absolutely focused on Romans 12:3-8 and spiritual gifts. Nod. Yes, it is. Okay, good, most of you, focused on the word of God. Your internal organs are functioning, everything is doing its part.

And this is the analogy that the apostle Paul has given us for the Body of Christ, for the Church, that we who are one have specialized purposes within the body, and that only as each part does its work does the body grow up into full maturity. You have, each one of you, that are believers in Christ, you have a function and a purpose and a role in the Body of Christ. My question to you today is: Are you fulfilling it? Are you fulfilling it?

I worry that our Church could be a "come, listen and leave" type of church. And I don't want that to be the case, because I don't think you can be healthy as a Christian if that's you. If you're not involved, if you don't have a regular pattern of spiritual gift ministry, you're not going to grow, you're not going to be healthy. And not only will you, individually, not grow. This body can't be what it needs to be.

And so we're right on schedule to discuss today one of the most important things that we need to discuss. And I say it is important because as I read the Scriptures and I focused in on the Bible and try to understand its message, I see one great warning over the Scriptures. The most valuable thing that you possess is your soul. It's the most valuable thing you possess. Therefore the greatest danger to you, the greatest danger in life is that you would lose your soul. For Jesus said, "What good would it be for a man if he would gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul?"

And so therefore, the salvation of your soul should be the center of your life. And if you're not a Christian, if you have not trusted in Christ, that should be your only business this morning, or any day. Until you come to the cross and you trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have no other business, because that's the value of your soul. Nothing else matters than that you find forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ.

But that's not the only danger. There's a second danger, not equal to it, because the thing that we're discussing is not of equal value, but it has to do with your life here on Earth. It has to do with your time here on Earth. And therefore, the second great danger I have in mind is that you or I would waste our lives on things that don't matter, that we would take this precious time we have on Earth and squander it on things that don't matter at all, on idols that the devil hands us in exchange for real fruitful service to Jesus Christ. And that is a grave danger because all of us are going to have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, 2 Corinthians 5. We're going to have to give Him an account for the things done in the body, whether good or bad. That's all of us. We have to give him an account, and therefore I don't want to stand and give Him an account of a wasted life, and neither do you.

And so therefore, you might say "Well, what do I do? How do I not waste my life? How do I not spend my time on things that don't matter?" I think that spiritual gifts is the answer. I think that God has given to each one of us a spiritual gift package, and out of that package, that array of special abilities, he's calling on us to minister. And so the call to us this week and next week, right from Romans 12:3-8, is to use our spiritual gifts.

Now, as we come to the doctrine of spiritual gifts, you might want to know why is this important? Why is this doctrine important? Well, I think, if you look at Romans 12 and see the flow of the letter as we've understood it, you're going to see in its positioning in the Bible why this is so incredibly important. We have had 11 chapters of incredible doctrine, haven't we? The description of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the deepest doctrine you can imagine, a solid foundation for all the practical advice that the apostle is about to give us concerning our lives. And he culminates all 11 chapters of this deep doctrine with this incredible doxology at the end of Chapter 11, in which he just praises and magnifies and glorifies the greatness of our incomprehensible God. And it's just worship.

And he goes from that into practicalities. Chapter 12 and following, we are looking at the practical Christian life, and he starts right away with the center of your physical life on Earth. What's it going to be? He urges us, in view of God's mercies, to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. He says that this is your spiritual act of worship. This is what worship is. Present yourself to God physically to serve him. And then he talks about the presentation of the mind, and he says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

And the next thing he talks about, friends, is spiritual gifts. The next thing he talks about is spiritual gifts. Do you see how vital this is, just in position in the letter? He goes from 11 chapters of doctrine to two verses a very intense core practicality to spiritual gifts. That's vital.

Now, the epistle began with spiritual gifts, Romans 1:11 and 12. He says, "I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith." Now, I don't think the word "faith" there is... I think it's a wonderful word, but we could almost say "mutually encouraged by each other spiritual gifts as well," couldn't we? I long to give you my spiritual gift and I long for you to give me yours and we can build each other up. That's what he says. That's how he began.

But here in Romans 12, the practical application of the Gospel, he gives us spiritual gifts right after telling us to present our souls, bodies and minds and wills to God as spiritual sacrifices. Therefore you know what I get out of that? Spiritual gifts must be incredibly important, because it comes so soon after all of this doctrine.

He does the same thing in Ephesians 4. After giving us three chapters of deep doctrine, Ephesians 1, 2, and 3, some of the deepest you'll find in the New Testament, he immediately goes from there to talk about the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Says we should maintain the unity. He's talking about one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all Who is over all and through and in all. One-one-one.

But... That's a very important word. That means we're going in a different direction. "But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it." Yes, we're all one, but we each have a different function in the Body. We have different gifts according to the grace of God. And He says in Ephesians 4, "it was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service so the body of Christ could be built up. Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

That is awesome. As He gives us spiritual gifts, He says the ultimate end is that the whole worldwide body of Jesus Christ would reach its full perfection in Christ. It is God's chosen way of getting from here to there. Spiritual gifts. Incredibly important, and it says in verse 16 of chapter 4, Ephesians 4:16, "From Him," Christ, "the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work."

You know what I get out of that? It's only as each part does its work that the Body of Christ is built up. That means that if parts of the body don't do their work, the body cannot grow like it should. Spiritual gifts are important. You get the same thing in 1 Corinthians. He sets aside in effect three chapters, 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, those three chapters, to talk about the issue of spiritual gifts. Now he's dealing there, with the Church in Corinth, with a very gifted and talented Church, what we call a gifted Church. He says, "You don't lack any spiritual gift. You folks are rich in spiritual gifts."

They had a problem, though. They were too people-centered. They were too focused on what people could do. Too man-centered, focused on following Paul or Cephas or this other individual. There were factions, and they were too enamored with human wisdom. They were too human-focused. And he deals with that problem. And they were boasting, if you can believe that. Boasting in their spiritual gifts. And that created a sense of jealousy about one gift over another, especially the very showy gifts, like miracles or prophecy or tongues. Those "sign gifts." They were really boasting. And so there was a real focus on those gifts in 1 Corinthians, especially the gift of tongues.

Now, there he lays out, in these three chapters, incredible doctrine on spiritual gifts, and he uses the same analogy that he uses here, that of the physical body. The body is incredibly complex, and I don't have the courage to go into great detail about the body, because there's too many doctors out there listening to me, and I'm going to get some of you to come and tell me what I did wrong. That's happened before, and I just don't want to go through that. Is that okay? So I'm just going to speak generally about cells that are specialized to do different things. And those of you that are better at it can, if you're Sunday school teacher, whatever, do it more detailed. You've studied; you've earned the right. I haven't.

But there's specialization in the body, and that whole concept comes so beautifully in 1 Corinthians 12. And at the center of that whole development chapter 12, 13, and 14, he gives the focus. The love chapter. And it's so easy to look at it and say, "Oh, what a beautiful piece of Christian poetry." "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love," et cetera. And it's so beautiful at weddings. Like Pachelbel's Canon and 1 Corinthians 13, they just go together. You use them at weddings. 1 Corinthians 13 was written about how we use spiritual gifts and the primacy of love, and use your gift to love and serve each other, not to boast over each other.

So think of it in terms of spiritual gifts. I want to read those first three verses that you're so familiar. Don't think "wedding" now. Think "spiritual gifts" and see if some things pop up.

"If I speak with the tongues... " Should I stress it? "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or clinging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy... " I'm making it easy for you. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Do you see the gifts? Tongues, prophecy, knowledge, faith, the gift of giving. They're right there, and he says that above all of that is love. The gifts are given as a servant of love: Love for God and love for each other. And so, spiritual gifts must be vital because there's all this treatment of them in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14.

And then again in 1 Peter 4. Now, there's not an extended treatment of spiritual gifts in 1 Peter. He's writing to a suffering Church. They're going through great persecution, and in the middle of all this crucial advice he gives to these believers that are scattered throughout the world and going through great suffering, he talks about spiritual gifts, In 1 Peter 4:10, it says, "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms." Spiritual gifts.

And then, how about the Book of Acts? Do you see any spiritual gifts at work in the Book of Acts? Well, one could contend that that's about what the book is about. It's about the exercise of these various offices and gifts under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Spirit, to build the Church up numerically and in spiritual maturity. Do you just see it happening? Do you see the apostolic gifts of Peter and John and Paul? Do you see the gift of encouragement in Barnabas? Do you see the gift of servanthood in those seven men that we call the deacons? Do you see gifts in Steven and gifts in Philip and in Philip's daughters? Do you see gifts in Agabus, the prophet who used his gifts? Do you see the flowing of spiritual gifts in the Book of Acts and how God uses it to build up the bodies?

Beautiful, it's beautiful. And so therefore, Romans, Ephesians, Corinthians, Peter, Acts, we see spiritual gifts flowing through the New Testament as a vital unifying force for growth and change. It's not a minor thing. This is not some corner of theology that's not important. This is your life, this is your service, this is God's gift to you, so that you won't waste your life, but rather spend it for His glory.

Now, what do we mean by spiritual gifts? How would I define spiritual gifts? Well, spiritual gifts are special abilities that God gives, by His Spirit, according to His wisdom, to each individual member of the Body of Christ. Differently or variously to each individual member for the purpose of building up the Body of Christ until it reaches full maturity. That's not the definition I have written down here, and I couldn't repeat it again, but get the tape or whatever. Something like this: Special abilities given by the wise plan of God. Each person gets one. There's a different arrangement for each one. The purpose is the building up of the Body of Christ. That's what spiritual gifts are.

Look at verses 6-8 in our text. It says, "We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage. If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently. If it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully."

Corinthians adds to the list, Ephesians 4 adds the list, 1 Peter 4 adds the list. And interestingly, none of them are the same. And you know what that tells me, is that these lists are not meant to be exhaustive but rather suggestive. Not exhaustive but suggestive. So some have done a conflation of all the lists and they come up with prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy, evangelism, pastoring, hospitality, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, distinguishing between Spirit, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues.

That is the list if you put them all together from those various places. But I think what we need to realize is these are meant to be suggestive. And I believe that Christians are given an array of them, not just one gift, but more of like a gift package, some stronger, some weaker, but this arrangement so that you can go do the works God has in mind for you to do. Is that exciting? Isn't it thrilling to know that God has thought about you specifically and given to you some gifts so that you can build up the Body of Christ.

And so we have these here in Romans 12. Prophesying, for example. One interpretation of this is literally speaking the Word of God immediately. So you can say, "Thus says the Lord," and what comes after is the Word of God directly to the people. That is a good definition of prophecy. Others, like John MacArthur and the Puritans, say that prophesying also has to do with speaking in a prophetic sense the inerrant Word of God directly, with an application force, so there's a sense of authority. They would say that that's preaching. I'm not comfortable with that, but I understand why they say that. But that's okay. The gift of prophesying.

Some would say that prophesying is still going on today; others would say it isn't. I'm not getting into that. I know some of you'll kind of say, "What about all of those sign gifts and miracles and all that?" We can talk about it later. Not this sermon, okay. We're just looking generally at spiritual gifts, but the gift of prophesying.

We also have this gift of serving, or some call it helping, finding various needs, frequently of a physical nature, finding a way you can use your resources, your time, your energy, your love, to help somebody, physically. To meet a need, help them in some way. The gift of teaching is that of understanding, interpreting, unfolding, and explaining the written Word of God, applying it effectively to the hearers.

The gift of encouragement here is, I think, just giving energy and strength to brothers and sisters so that they won't falter or grow weary in doing good, or so they won't drift into sin. Key words would be like advising, pleading, encouraging, exhorting, warning, strengthening, comforting. These things are done by a person with the gift of encouragement.

Contributing to the needs of others is the gift of giving. Financially especially, or materially, giving money and other material possessions to support brothers and sisters in their needs or in their ministries. Leadership. Some call it administration. Guiding ministries and leading them, making discerning decisions, rallying and motivating people to support the direction that God is leading the church. And then the gift of mercy, which is actively showing sympathy for someone who's going through suffering and sorrow, especially gifted to alleviate sorrow. So, those are the gifts that are listed here in Romans 12, there are others in other places.

All the gifts come by grace

And one of the things that I've noticed as I study spiritual gifts, is how often this language of grace is used. The spiritual gifts are called grace from God. Look what Paul says here in Verse 3, "For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone of you," and then he goes on. Well, what is the grace given to him? Well, you could just say it's just the grace of God etcetera, but I think he's saying, "For by my spiritual gift, I'm saying to everyone of you about your spiritual gifts, such-and-such." His spiritual gift is that of being an apostle. I think he means a spiritual gift ministry, he uses this language frequently. Look at verse 6, We have different gifts according to what? The grace given to us. Do you see that? So gifts are spiritual grace, grace from God. Spiritual gifts are grace from God. He uses this language in many places, Ephesians 3, "I became a servant of this Gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this grace…"

He's saying, "I don't deserve this. I'm less than the least of all God's people, but God gave me a grace, and that is to preach the Gospel in this way." Ephesians 4:7, as I've already quoted, "But to each one of us grace has been given, as Christ apportioned it." The word apportioned in Ephesians 4:7 is metron, according to the measurement of Christ. So isn't it amazing to think that God thinks about you, has thought about you as an individual believer, and has measured out to you a gift of grace? Isn't that incredible? And so it's called grace. 1 Peter 4:10 says the same thing, "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering, or as stewards of God's grace in its various forms." So spiritual gifts are grace. Now, why are they called grace?

Well, first and foremost, they're grace to us. They're grace to us to rescue us from a wasted life, they're grace to us because we feel the flow of the Spirit, like the wind in the sails, when you're using your spiritual gift. And I think it's like that, it's like I know that skilled sailors in a really well-made boat can sail almost directly in the wind and go that direction if they can create a kind of a vacuum off the sail, and they can... They can do that, but that's not the best way for them to sail. It's better to sail in a specific way, the way the wind hits the sails, and I think this is it, the spirit moves you in a certain direction and your sales are set to just really fly when you're using that spiritual gift.

Isn’t that wonderful? It's grace to you, it rescues you from a wasted life, and it feels good, it gives a sense of joy and belonging to use your gift to serve others. It's also grace from God to others through you. So it's grace to other people. You are a pipe of grace, and the grace just flows like a river through you to other people and they are blessed by you. They're encouraged by you, they're built up by you. It's just grace flowing.

Now, Paul uses this body analogy as we've talked about Romans 12, each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. So this body analogy is not developed here, it's more developed in 1 Corinthians 12, and I love what Paul says there, he says, "The body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say 'Because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body,' it would not for that reason, cease to be part of the body, and if the ear should say 'because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason, cease, to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?" Now, just pause and ponder that for a moment.

Imagine your whole body were an eye. I mean just think about it. It's really kind of a shocking almost gruesome thought. And Paul says that we're not all an eye. And what you are is what God made you to be and you can't yearn to be an eye if you're not an eye. You can't yearn to be an ear if you're not an ear. In fact, God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part where would the body be? You see that? And so just to summarize the idea of the one body, many members, members have different functions, members are arranged as God wanted them to be. All members belong equally to the body, all members belong equally to each other. No member is more important than any other, and no member is useless. And as the members do their function, the body grows up to full maturity. That's what it's teaching. Now what is the significance to each one of us?

Significance for the individual and for the whole church

Well, let me say it to you directly. If you are a Christian, you have a spiritual gift package, whether you know it or not. God has entrusted it to you as something that belongs ultimately to him, he's going to want it back. Some day he's going to ask for it back with interest. If you don't have interest to show him, you have to give Him an account of why you didn't use your gifts. He's given them to you, this is what the scripture says. He has already given you a spiritual gift arrangement or package. You need to use it as a steward of God. And whether you listen carefully to this sermon or whether it changes your life or not, it doesn't matter, what matters is that some day, if you're a Christian, you will stand before Christ, and give Him an account for your spiritual gift package, what you did with it. That's how it matters to you individually. How does it matter to us as a community?

\ Well, I think God wants to do incredible great things through this church, I think he's going to do incredible great things through this church. I think this church is going to grow stronger and stronger in the grace of Christ, and I think he's going to do it by spiritual gifts. And as each one of you who are members of this church faithfully administer God's grace in its various forms we will grow as he intends. That's why it's important for us as a body.

Now, what I want to do this week and next week for the rest of the time we have, is to give you three simple steps on what to do. You might say, "What do I do? How do I act? I sense I'm not using my spiritual gift, I sense I don't really have a pattern of ministry, I'm not really doing anything much for Christ. What do I do? I'm going to give you three big steps.

Discover, develop and use. This week discover, God willing, next week develop and use. Discover your spiritual gifts, discover what they are, discover about spiritual gifts, discover. Second, next week, develop. Spiritual gifts need development, just because you have a gift doesn't mean it's fully developed, needs to be developed. We'll talk about that next week. And use it, trade with it. Get out and get involved with it, that's what we're getting at. Let's look at the first spiritual gifts, discover. Now, how do we discover our spiritual gifts? I'm going to break this into two sections. First, what you can do for yourself second, what you can do for others. Alright, how do I discover my own spiritual gifts? Let's start with that,

Step One: Understand God Has a Plan for Your Life  

Alright. Step one: Understand God has a plan for your life. Alright. Look at verse 2, "Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, for you. His good, pleasing and perfect will." God has a will for your life. He has it planned out, he has good works that only you can do. Ephesians 2:10 teaches this. I believe with all my heart that spiritual gifts are at the center of God's good pleasing and perfect will for you. I think I called this sermon that. Yeah, there we go; "God's pleasing will for you, spiritual gifts". Well that must make it true, right? Well, whether that's true or not, look at the text. Look at verse 3. What is the first word of verse 3? For. Why is that important? Because it connects what follows with what precedes. Let's put it this way.

God's good, pleasing and perfect will for you for by the grace of God, and goes on to spiritual gifts. That means that God's good, pleasing, and perfect will for you has something to do with spiritual gifts. That's what the word for means to me. A lot of people come to pastors or spiritual folks and say they have questions concerning God's will for their lives, you know what they almost always have to do with? Marriage. But other than that, there's other things like what college I should attend. Alright where I should live? What I should do with my tithe money? All kinds of questions concerning God's will for my life. I was talking last night to Ron Halbrook and he said he heard Henry Blackaby speaking. Now, Henry Blackaby recently, I think it was last night even. Henry Blackaby wrote the book, Experiencing God.

The basic idea of experiencing God is that we get to know God as we get involved in what God is doing around us. Do you see how spiritual gifts fits into that? What's interesting, Henry Blackaby said, We are heading toward one of the most biblically illiterate generations in the history of the American church. And as Henry Blackaby says, he's counseling young people, and they come to him with questions about God's will for their lives, they want to know what God's will is. He said, "Well let's look at the scripture." And they seem kind of shocked. "Well, why would we do that?" They actually don't imagine that the scripture has anything to say concerning God's will for their lives. But I'm telling you that you will be able to discern God's good, pleasing and perfect will, you'll be able to test and approve it concerning spiritual gifts. "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought," and he goes into spiritual gifts.

God's Word has something to say to you about spiritual gifts. Bottom line is, if you don't want to waste your life, please discover, develop, and use your spiritual gifts. I couldn't say it any more plainly. That is the center of this sermon. If you don't want to waste your life, please discover, develop and use your spiritual gifts. Secondly, present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Understand first, God has a plan for your life, so search it out, find out what it is.

Step Two: Present Yourself as a Living Sacrifice

Number two: Present your body as a living sacrifice. We have already covered that. I don't need to say anymore. But basically, you're saying. "God here is my body, use me today to serve." Step

Step Three: Be Transformed by Renewing by Your Mind

Three: Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Just saturate your mind in the word of God. Again, we had a whole sermon on that. I don't need to go into that again, but just have your mind in the word of God. But focus on this issue say "Lord I want to know what the spiritual gifts are for me. Then it says, You'll be able to test and approve what God's will is. If you're saturating your mind in the word of God, you're around godly people that are talking about ministry, they're talking about what God wants for them. You listen and you just get transformed. Alright.

Step Four: Think About Yourself Properly

Now, step four: Think about yourself. Now for some of you that's no problem, for others, maybe a little bit more of a problem. You think, "Well, that's just not Christian. We shouldn't be thinking about ourselves. We should think of others." Well, can I urge and just tell you to be honest? Don't you think about yourself, some? I'm sure you do.

The question is, Are you thinking about yourself properly? Paul actually commands you here to think about yourself. Look what he says, verse 3, "For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." So there you are, you are commanded to think about yourself.

But you are commanded to think about yourself in a certain way. Basically what you need to do is stop and say, Lord, who am I? What have you made me to be? What kind of person am I? What do I love? What do I enjoy doing? Where do I feel the wind just hitting the sail and causing my boat to move? What do I delight doing for you? Think about yourself. But think about yourself it says, With humility. Don't think about of yourself more highly than you ought. You know why? Because what's going to happen is once the wind hits the sail at just the right angle and you really start to move, you know what's going to happen? Good things. I mean really good things are going to happen. And the body of Christ is going to start responding and they're going to say, I like what you do when you do that. That is wonderful. Thank you for that. They going to encourage you.

And you know what you're going to need to do? Go back to Romans 12:3, And not think of yourself more highly than you ought. Because God's going to use you. But I also want to say from 1 Corinthians 12. Don't think of yourself more lowly than you ought either. Beause I'm not so and so, I really don't belong to the body. I don't have that full measure of all the gifts that he's got or she's got, or I don't have that gift and I wish I did, so I'm not really part of the body, I'm not really included. God could never use my little gift to do anything, don't do that either. Think of yourself it says, With sober judgment, with sober judgment.

I love what CS Lewis said about this. CS Lewis in his great book, Screwtape Letters, one of the most mischievous Christian books ever written. The whole thing is written from the perspective, an older demon teaching a younger demon how to tempt people. Isn't that incredible? So Screwtape writing to Wormwood on how to get us in trouble. So we're kind of listening in on the conversation. Oh, I see what you're doing. And that's just the way Lewis wrote it so brilliantly. But he gets to this one point talking about false humility. At one point, he says, "Have you noticed that your subject is getting humble? Please call his attention to the fact, okay, so we can pollute the virtue. The more humble he thinks he is, the less humble he'll be."

But then it just gets into talking about this issue of humility and this is what it says. "Thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe that they're ugly, and clever men trying to believe they are fools. God wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best Cathedral in the world and know it to be the best. And rejoice in the fact that it's the best, without being any more or less or otherwise glad at having done it than he would if it had been done by another." That's sober judgment, this is it, this is what I do, this is the thing but it doesn't matter that I did it, it matters that it was good and worth doing. "God wants him in the end to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents." Isn't that incredible? You just got to kinda get out of yourself and look at yourself and assess what you do and see what's really good and beneficial to the body and what isn't.

Think about yourself with sober judgment. Do it with humility and assess what God is doing. And it says, According to the measure of faith, God has given you. What do I mean by that? What I mean is not everybody's going to get the same measure of spiritual gifts. In other words, there are some that have the gift of preaching and others have more of the gift, there's some of that have the gift of giving, and others have more of the gift. God gives the amounts but just know what your gifts are, and use them.

Step Five: Serve God Constantly in Common Ways

Step five: Get busy. I mean just start doing things. Serve God constantly in the common ways that Christians are called on to serve God. Hasn't He called on all of us to be witnesses? By the way, don't ever use spiritual gifts as a dodge for your evangelistic duty, saying "I don't have the gift of evangelism, so I don't need to share the gospel with a waiter or waitress." That's just not true. We are supposed to be active and involved in witnessing but not everyone has that gift in a certain way, where they're going to spend all of their time focused on doing that. I understand that, but there are certain duties that are common in the Christian life. Witnessing is one, praying is one, exercising faith, helping others, serving others, right? Giving money, these things are common in the Christian life. Do them, do lots of them. Get involved and serve.

The illustration I used a few weeks ago when somebody asked me about spiritual gifts. When I was a child, I used to play with it, when I was a young boy, with balsa wood airplanes. Remember those 89 cent, you get them at convenient stores, they come in these long slender packs. You rip them open, pull out and there's a little thin balsa wood planes. They have a heavy nose-clip and you'd slide the thing in there, and you go and they would fly. Well, I got one once, it was a biplane and you could set the wings in all different kinds of configurations. If you set them one way they'd fly for distance and altitude, set it another way, it would bank left, or bank right, or it would do a loop to loop or a barrel roll, all depending on how you set the wings. So I could set up the wings according to the instructions of the maker, but it wasn't until I threw the thing and air started getting under the wings and it started to show its natural proclivities that I could tell what it was designed to do.

And so you have to get out and use your time wisely. Be active in lots of areas of the Christian life. Do the things that God's called on you to do. You look at the list and for the most part, these are common Christian duties aren't they? So just get out and do them, get involved, do ministries.

Step Six: Look for the Validation of the Body of Christ

And then step six: Look for the validation of the body of Christ. Look for others to say, "Hey when you do that, that is wonderful. Keep doing that. Or, you know, something, I think your gifts might lie in another area. Okay, those can be some of the most fruitful conversations, although somewhat painful. But why waste your time on something that really isn't your gift, but yes you wish it were. Alright.

So you should get out there and listen to what the body says. Step one: Understand that God has a plan for your life. Step two: Present yourself as a living sacrifice. Step three: Be transformed by renewing your mind. Step four: Think about yourself soberly and properly. Step five: Serve God constantly in common ways, and step six: Look for the validation of the body. That's what you can do for yourself. Now, what can you do for others? You might think, Well, what do I have to do for others? Much. Romans 12:3 says, You should think about yourself. Hebrews 10:24 says, You should think about others. If you look at Hebrews 10:24, it says, "And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good deeds." That's a good translation. Of all the major English translations, only the KJV kept the proper connection between the verb and it's subject. Let us consider not how we may spur one another on... It's not a how we're considering friends, we're not considering a how, we're considering somebody with a name.

Let us consider so and so or so and so or so and so. Brother, sister in Christ, let's think about them. Take 10 minutes to pray for them and say, What is so and so spiritual gift Lord? Show me, and I'm going to go and encourage them to do something. I want to know it. I want to know what their gifts are. And you might say, "Look alright, you could do this in your small group, you'd take on each other and so you're going to pray for each other, every week one person and work on somebody, find out what their spiritual gifts are. You pray for, you help each other. You exhort one another, etcetera. Now, I've come to the conclusion. If you do that for somebody, week or two, you spend some time thinking and you come up "empty", one of two things is true. Either you don't know them very well, or they're not doing very much.

If you can't help somebody and exhort them, you either are not close enough in their lives or they're not really doing much to serve. Either way I think you have a ministry response. Get to know them, get involved in their lives, find out what they're doing and if they're not doing much for Christ exhort them to love and good deeds. Say, Let's get going at step five, level-five and just start doing some of the things of the Christian life. Get involved. And then little by little, you can exhort them to love and good deeds. This morning, we have looked at spiritual gifts for the first week. Well God willing we'll look again next week, we've talked about what they are, we've talked about special abilities that God has given, and we've looked at the first level, discovering spiritual gifts.

God willing, next week, we're going to talk about developing and using spiritual gifts, application. Well, if you're not a believer in Christ, and you are just here today because somebody invite you to church or you came in from off the street, there's one gift that I'd like to give you more than any of the others. I'd like to give you the gift of salvation through faith in Christ. I don't have the power to give it, but the gospel does. The gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Accept the gift of eternal life. If you've never trusted in Christ, don't leave this building without giving your life to him. Come and talk to me at the end of the service, or after the service. Say, "I want to know more about being a Christian. I want to follow Jesus. That's the gift I want. That's top priority, but second issue, if you're already a Christian, don't waste your life, find out what your spiritual gifts are. Discover them, develop them, and use them. Close with me in prayer.

We're looking this morning for the second week, at two phenomenally important verses in terms of practical application. Romans 12:1-2. And I don't think it's a rare thing for human beings to look at themselves and wish they were different. Amen?  

Isn't that true? You look at yourself and you wish you were different, you wish you could be a different person. And so we have a kind of a whole makeover culture here in America, right? The great makeover. And some people think maybe surgery is the answer, and I don't think it really is. I think Christians are wise enough to know we don't need a major transformation in our outward appearance. That's not really what we're looking at. You may think your home needs a makeover, and you love those people to come and do it for you, and that would be wonderful. But in terms of yourself, you're thinking, "How can I be a different person?" And it isn't long in the Christian life before you realize it's a heart issue, it's got to do with a change within, change of the mind, and that's what we're getting at this morning. 

Now, there are a lot of different ways even there that you can have your mind changed. During the Spanish Inquisition, for example, they thought torture was a good way to change the mind. Well, I don't think so, I think all you're going to do is get external conformity through suffering and all that. But they thought there were some successes to battling heresy that way, I would disagree. 

During the Korean War, they used the techniques of brainwashing, where they would get you broken down, they would get you physically weary, they would get you weak through lack of food, they'd wake you up in the middle of the night and they would be very aggressive and mean to you until you're finally psychologically broken down, and then they would bring in a really nice guy who'd start putting his arm around you, speaking friendly to you and saying, "Look, why don't you become a communist? It really is the better way." These techniques were developed by the Russian communists in the 1930s, and they're very effective in one level. 

But that's not the kind of transformation we're looking at today, when we study the transformation by the Word of God. If you look at Romans 12:1-2, we're coming to two of the most important verses in terms of the practical daily life of the Christian. We looked at it last two weeks ago, last time, concerning what it is that God wants from us now that He's been so gracious to us in the Gospel. Romans 12:1-2, it says, "Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercies, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship." And Verse 2 says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will." So here at last, we come to the great battleground of the Christian life, the human mind. And it is a battleground, and there's a lot of pull back and forth going on over your mind. 

Earlier, a number of years ago, my wife and I visited the great battlefield of Gettysburg, and there's all kinds of monuments and all kinds of history surrounding there. The Gettysburg Address were met on a battlefield, a great battlefield of this struggle. I tell you this, that there is no battlefield as significant and vital as that of the human mind. That's where the battle for life change is fought. And praise be to God, the weapons of God are mighty to the transformation of the human mind. That is how we're going to see our lives changed. That's exactly what Romans 12 is talking about. 

Now, I think it would be beneficial for us to look at a brief history of the human mind. It all started a long, long time ago, at creation, when God created man in His image, male and female, He created them. And from the very beginning, God created the human mind as I think the greatest, most complex physical creation He ever made. We know in Psalm 139:14, David the psalmist says, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." That is especially true of the human mind. Do you know that your brain has 100 billion neurons? Do you realize that part of your brain is assigned now to remember that fact? So now you have to think, "My brain has 100 billion neurons." But what does that mean? Well, the Amazon rainforest has 100 billion trees. You have the same number of neurons in your brain as the Amazon rainforest has trees. And each neuron has as many interconnections as there are leaves on an average tree. That boggles the mind, doesn't it?  

The human brain is the most complex physical thing that God ever made. It is the center of memory, of mood, of instinct, of will, of emotion, of decision, of all bodily function, the human brain. It is also the seat of individuality and personal history. You train your brain through every experience you go through in life. Everything you go through creates a memory and those memories have an influence on you, and habits can form as a result. The power of interpretation is centered in the brain, of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste, constantly feeding your mind with information. The human brain was created in the image of God, it was created to enjoy God, to know Him forever. It was created with a Godward focus, and it was created to know the glory of God in physical creation. That's the start. The human brain fearfully and wonderfully made. However, the human brain did not stay pristine and essentially good, the human brain fell in sin. 

And this thing we've already seen in Romans Chapter 1, a description of the fallen state of the human mind. There it says in Verse 21, "Although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became futile." Did you hear that? Their thinking became futile, "And their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man, and birds, and animals and reptiles." That is the fall of the human mind through sin. The human mind leads the life, and therefore a corrupt mind leads to a corrupt lifestyle. This is made very plain in Ephesians Chapter 4, the Apostle Paul put it this way, "So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding, and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." 

Do you see? Because of ignorance you're separated from a kind of life that God wants you to live. There's an intimate connection between the way you think and the way you live. And so, it says in Ephesians 4, "We're not to live like those people anymore, whose darkened minds and their darkened understandings are leading to darkened lifestyles." He says, "Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more." That is the corrupt life that comes from a corrupt mind or a corrupt way of thinking. As a result of sin, the natural mind, it says in Romans 8, is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law nor can it do so. Those characterized by that fleshly or hostile mind, it's impossible for them to please God. 

It also says that those folks who are characterized by a sinful mind, the mind separated from the life of God, cannot understand spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from God because they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." And so it is that the beautiful gift, the incredible creation of God, the human mind with all of its complexity, was corrupted as a result of sin. And that's where we begin with the Gospel, we start with a corrupted mind. But thanks be to God, He doesn't leave us there. Isn't that wonderful? That God doesn't leave our corrupted minds corrupted, but rather, thirdly, there is this regenerated mind. The word means a new creation, that God can do and has done, if you're a Christian, within you, a work of new creation, the creation of a regenerated mind. 

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come." Well, friends, that is especially true in the mind. It's true in the mind because we think differently. At the very beginning of the Christian life, you immediately think differently about Jesus, that's where it all starts. And so, the Spirit of God moves over the darkened, hardened, dead, spiritually dead mind, and creates something new there that wasn't there before. And what is it? It's an appreciation or a value of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6 puts it this way, "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." Friends, that's the very thing an unbeliever does not have, any sense of the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 

But at the moment you were saved, at the moment you trusted in Christ, it was the Spirit's work of regeneration in you that created a light that will never be extinguished. And John Chapter 1 says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot extinguish it." It's the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That is the regenerated mind. And at that moment, it says in Scripture, that the mind of Christ was given to us. Isn't that marvelous? We have the mind of Christ. I'm just quoting Scripture. 1 Corinthians 2:16 says, "But we have the mind of Christ," that is the regenerated mind. However, we are commanded to use it. You may have it and not use it. And therefore, it says in Philippians Chapter 2, "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing," going on to talk about the humility of Christ. But the command there is, you should have this mind in you, which was also in Christ. 

Now, there's no contradiction here between the Scriptures. Yes, you have the mind of Christ, but you're also commanded to use it. You're to think like Jesus. We have the mind of Christ, but we need to grow in thinking like Christ, and that's where we have this issue now of the renewed mind. The renewed mind. It says in the verse we're looking at today, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." There's an ongoing renewing work that has to happen in your mind, it's a constant commitment. Now, you say, "I don't think in a pure way, Pastor. I don't. I don't think 100% about anything." Well, that's the way we all experience the Christian life, isn't it? There's a battle within us. Galatians Chapter 5 says that the Spirit battles against the flesh, the flesh battles against the Spirit. There's a battle going on, it's going on in the mind. Romans 7 talks about it. It says, "So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin." There's a battle going on, and it starts in the human mind. 

So therefore, if you want your whole life to be transformed, if you want a genuine makeover, not just a surface makeover, you've got to start with the battle over the mind, you've got to think like Jesus. And that's what Paul is getting at here in Romans 12. For it says in Romans 8:5, "Those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on what the flesh desires. But those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds on what the Spirit desires." So, the whole thing comes down, friends, to mind control. And I know some of you wonder, "Are we heading toward being a cult?" We are not heading toward being a cult. This is a call of God from the Scripture to allow the Spirit of God to control your mind by the Word of God. That's what we're looking at this morning. It's all about mind control. 

12:30 AD: Now, where are we heading ultimately? Well, we're heading finally, fifth stage to the glorified mind. There at last, brothers and sisters, there will be no division of mind. It says in Deuteronomy 6, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And Jesus prays in John 17, "That they may be one, as we are one." We'll be perfectly of one mind with God. We will see everything the way He sees it, we'll think about everything the way He thinks about it, feel about everything the way He feels about it. And what bliss and joy there will be at last. "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I'll put you in charge of many things. Enter now into the joy of your Master." At last, you'll feel God's joy through and through." That's the future of the glorified mind. 

I was talking to Jeremy, my secretary, and he said, "I just want to skip to number five. Can we do that? Can we go right to the glorified mind?" Well, no. In the will of God, He has left you on this earth for sometime to battle the battle of the mind, and that's what we're looking at today. But friends, be joyful in hope. It says later in Romans 12, "The hope is for the glory of God." Someday, if you're a Christian, someday you will think exactly like God about everything, and you'll be fully at peace and fully at joy at that point. It says in 1 Corinthians 13, "For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child I thought like a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now, we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." That is the future of the Christian mind. We will know God, we will know Him through and through. "Now, this is eternal life," John 17, "That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." 

Okay, so we've gone through a brief history of the mind, we've looked through. What I wanna say is, why does the mind need to be transformed? And how can it be transformed? That's what we're looking at today. We've already looked in part at why the mind needs to be transformed. Let's dig in and try to find out how it relates to worship. Romans 12:1-2 are two of the most important verses on worship in the Christian life. It says that we are to offer our bodies as spiritual sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your reasonable, rational, logical, or spiritual act of worship. And so we need to understand what worship is. True worship is the essence of true Christianity. This is what the Father seeks. The Father is seeking worshipers, and the Father is seeking worship. You may already be a Christian, He's seeking something from you today, He's seeking worship from you today, He wants you to worship Him. 

Now this is what it says in John Chapter 4, Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, "A time is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth." What is the context of this issue of worship? We've already seen it. We've got 11 chapters of Christian doctrine, some of the deepest doctrine you'll read anywhere in the Bible, Romans 1-11. And in that, we have a tracing out of the mercies of God as He battles with the issue of sin in our lives and in the world. We've seen the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes the Gospel. We have traced out this doctrinal foundation. And it all culminates in one of the most incredible expressions of worship you'll ever find anywhere, the doxology of Romans 11. "Oh, the depth of the riches, the wisdom, and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever." 

And so we see Paul's incredible ability, soaring in doctrine, some of the highest, deepest doctrines you'll ever find, Romans 9-11. Soaring in praise with the doxology, he lands squarely on his feet in Romans 12:1-2, talking to us about our bodies, talking to us about our practical life. He never loses sight of the practicalities of the Christian life. This is Paul's usual manner. He gives the doctrinal foundation and he says, "Now based on these truths, how then shall we live?" This is his usual pattern. And in this way, God is honoring the human mind, isn't He? He's honoring the mind. He's not just going to tell you, "Do this, don't do that," a bunch of ethical things. He's going to reason with you, He's going to explain, He's going to give you a worldview out of which you will be able to live your life. He's honoring your mind. 

Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord." He's reasoning with us for 11 chapters. And now He tells us what to do. And He gives us that fourfold sacrifice. We looked at the first two, two weeks ago. The first is the soul, He wants your soul. What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Or, what would you give in exchange for your soul? You gave your soul to Christ when you trusted in Him. This is the mercy of God that He has had mercy on your soul, and you are forgiven, your sins are forgiven if you're a Christian, and you have trusted in Christ, you gave your soul to Christ. 

But secondly, He asks for your body. This is just review, but He says, "I want you to present your body to Me as a living sacrifice." We talked last time about how the presentation was the same word concerning the angels that came down or would have come down if Jesus had asked them. When Peter wanted to rescue Jesus from the cross, he drew his sword and tried to rescue Him, and Jesus said, "Put your sword away." And then he said, "Do you think I cannot call on my Father and He would at once put at My disposal more than 12 legions of angels?" The angels will come and be ready to serve, so also we must put at God's disposal our bodies. Every member, every part of our body, at His disposal, holy and pleasing to Him, a spiritual act of worship, the physical presentation, we saw that last time. God wants your body. 

Now it's a struggle, isn't it? Because the body is where sin resides, the lusts and the drives of the body, the habits of the body, that's where sin resides. And you look at Romans 7, it says, Paul puts it this way, "So I find this law at work, when I want to do good, evil is right there with me." Did you find that this week? You might have had a good resolution, a desire to do something good, but it's like you're dragging a weight. You can't quite do all the good things you'd like to do. Paul says, "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members." He says, in this body of death, there are habit patterns of sin that drag us down. 

And so he cries out in Romans 7, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." That is the answer. Jesus is in the process of rescuing you from the law of sin at work inside your members. Friends, that is called sanctification. Now, this is not an easy thing to do, is it? It's hard work. Paul says, "I beat my body and make it my slave, lest after I've preached to others, I myself might be disqualified from the prize." He's got to keep his body under subjection, it's not easy, it's a battle. Or what I contend from Romans is that the battle is in the mind, you've got to win the battle for the mind, and there's a pull back and forth, and it's right here in the text. There's the pull of the world, worldliness, the world system, and then there's the pull of God through His word, that's the battle, the struggle back and forth, the world and the Word. 

For it says, "Do not be conformed to this world." Do not be conformed to this world. Literally it says, "Do not be conformed to this age." J.B Phillips gave a wonderful translation of this, he said, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold." It really has to do with a conforming, that you're being forced to conform to the world. Did you know that the world has a mold that it wants to squeeze you in? The world wants to make you think like it does on every topic. The world wants you to think like it does on politics. It's called being politically correct. Alright? And if you violate the rules, they'll let you know. You have not been politically correct, you'll get into trouble. The world has a mold on clothing, it wants you to be in style or trendy. The world has a mold on success, it measures success by money and power and prestige. The world has a mold on everything, and it's very influential on the mind, it wants to pull you in a certain direction. The age, or the world that we're talking about here, one commentator called it the floating mass of thoughts, and opinions, and maxims, and speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, and aspirations, at any time current in the world. It's just this mass of influence and opinion, called the world. And it's been around a long time, friends. It has. 

Now, different versions, different forms, with every generation there's different flavors, but it's always anti-God, that's what it is. It's been around at least 400 years, because John Bunyan wrote about it in Pilgrim's Progress, when he talked about Vanity Fair. Now, there's a whole magazine now called Vanity Fair, but in Bunyan's work it's not a good thing, it's actually a polluting influence. This is what Bunyan wrote, "Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity. And at the town there was a fair kept called Vanity Fair, it is kept all the year-long. At this fair, are all such merchandise sold as houses, trades, lands, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, such as harlots, wives, husbands, children, master, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and whatnot. Moreover, at this fair, there is at all times to be seen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, naves and rogues, and that of every kind. Here are to be seen too, and not for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a blood red color. Now, as I said, the way to the celestial city lies just through this town, where this lusty fair is kept. And he that will go to the city and yet not go through this town, must needs go out of the world." 

Now, for me, I love Pilgrim's Progress just the way it's written, but I thought it might be helpful to you if I gave you an updated translation, okay? So here is the modern version according to me. You can write your own, but here we go. "Then I saw in my dream, when they came out of the wilderness, they suddenly saw a city before them, and the name of that city was Addictive Worthlessness. And in that city there was a huge mall called Addictive Worthlessness Mall. It is open 24/7, and there you can buy anything the heart could desire, vacation homes, real estate, trophies and awards, human applause, corporate ladder climbing techniques, corner offices, political appointments, travel packages to resort areas, lust, pleasures and delights of all kinds, such as swimsuit editions, pornographic DVDs, computer games, worldly magazines, and all the raw materials for earthly happiness that money can buy. Gold, silver, pearls, oriental silk, fine Corinthian leather, top-end electronic devices such as flat screen plasma TVs and satellite dishes. Here you can see, and for free too, thefts, murders, adulteries, blasphemies and all kinds of sins packaged as entertainment. And as I said, the way to the celestial city lies just through this filthy city where this lusty mall is owned and operated, and he that would go to the celestial city, and not have to go through the mall, has to die." 

So bottom line is, we have to face it. I'm not saying you have to go to the mall. Actually, I was in a men's group once and I said, "What do you do, just walking through the mall, and there's just temptations everywhere?" And the guy said, "Don't go to the mall." So that was a simple piece of advice. Some of us can't avoid going to the mall. The question is, "Are we going to be polluted by it?" There is so much in Scripture about this, but the warning here is quite clear. The inference in the Greek is, "Stop being conformed to this world." Do you see it? It's not, "Don't start being conformed." The implication is you're already conforming at some level. Stop being conformed to this age. Satan is manipulating the media to saturate your minds with the ways he wants you to think about life and death, about pleasure, about gender, about sexuality, about entertainment, about careers. He wants you to conform, he has a mold he wants to squeeze you in. 

But God commands you to be transformed, not conformed. And that's the parallel that he gives us here, "But be transformed." Friends, God also has a mold, and He wants to conform you to that, and that is Jesus Christ. He wants to make you like Jesus. He wants every last one of us to think, and reason, and feel, and choose like Jesus would. God has a mold as well. The entire saving work of God is to take sinners like us and transform us to be just like Christ. It's a metamorphosis he has in mind for you. He wants you to be transformed. Similar to when Peter, James, and John went up a high mountain with Jesus, and they saw that Jesus was transfigured in front of them, and his face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as radiant as a light, whiter than any launderer could get them. He was glorious in front of them. And not even with His full glory, because they couldn't survive that, but just that God allowed His Son to show some of His glory, turn it up a few notches so they could see just how glorious is Jesus. 

And you know what's so incredible? Someday we're going to shine with that glory. Isn't that incredible? We're going to glow with it similar, but far greater than when Moses' face shone when he was in the presence of God. For it says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "And we who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." He wants to make you more and more like Jesus. He wants you to be transformed. And as you gaze into the face of Christ, you will more and more be transformed from within, into Christ-likeness. And what is the ultimate result of this? Well, we've seen that the soul has been given to God, the body must be in an ongoing way, like a living sacrifice, presented to God. Your mind presented to the influence of God, we'll talk more about that in a minute, results in what? The will. You will choose what is good, and pleasing, and perfect, the will of God. 

It says, "Then you'll be able to test and approve God's will. His good, pleasing, and perfect will." You'll know what God's will is, you won't just know it, you'll want it. You'll yearn for it, you'll approve of His will. Now, a lot of people ask questions about what is the will of God for my life? We're going to talk more about that over the next few weeks, talk more about that. But I tell you this, you will not be able to discern God's will for yourself unless your soul is given to Christ through salvation, you give your soul to Him, you're ongoingly presenting your body to Him as a living sacrifice, and you're in an ongoing sense being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then, and only then, will you be able to test and approve God's will. 

Alright, now we have talked about why the mind needs to be transformed. The question is, how does it happen? How can my mind be transformed? Well, I want you to notice first and foremost that, I think a good translation will give you the sense of the passive here, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world," should really be translated, "Do not, or stop being conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." I want you to notice that both of these are passive. Both of them are passive, and it basically comes down to this, friends, to what are you presenting your mind so that it can be influenced? What are you handing your mind to? What do you say... When you're presenting your mind, you're saying, "Here, change me. Here, influence me." What are you presenting your mind to? Both of them are passive. You're either going to be conformed to this age, or you're going to be transformed into the image of Christ. 

The issue is, to what are you presenting your mind? And the fundamental concept here very practically is, what is going into your mind, and what is your mind chewing on or meditating on? And I think that's what needs to be controlled. You need to control what goes into your mind, and you need to control by the power of the Spirit, what your mind mulls on, what it meditates on, what it thinks about. Now, Scripture calls on us to allow the Word of God to be both the input and the meditation. Psalm 119:15-16 says, "I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes, I will not forget your Word." So, we are to meditate on the Word of God. I guess the simple secret here is just daily saturation in the Word of God as illuminated by the Holy Spirit. 

When my wife and I and our two older children were missionaries in Japan for two years, we were in the Tokushima area, it's in Shikoku, one of the smallest of the four large islands of Japan. And they had a lot of local culture there, a lot of things that they're really proud of and that were a big part of their culture. So we went one time to a cultural museum, and we saw that they had a big display of indigo dying there, and apparently, that was a major industry in Tokushima in generations past, and they still do some of it. Indigo, of course, is that blue in the blue jeans that we're used to, that blue color. And they showed all of these processes, whereby the cloths were dyed. The bottom line was this, they would take a white cloth and they would dip it into the dye and they would bring it out, and then they would dip it back in and they would bring it out. And the longer it stayed in and the more frequently they dipped it, the deeper it got in color. There were some that were just very light blue, all the way to some that were as dark as midnight blue. That's what it comes down to. What are you immersing your mind in so that it can be affected? "What are you marinating in?", is another analogy What are you taking in, and what are you pondering? Or, what are you thinking about?  

The more time you spend watching TV, surfing the net, reading worldly magazines, listening to worldly talk shows, hanging around worldly people that only talk about worldly things, watching worldly entertainment, and then the more profound as a result will be the influence of the world on the way you think. You're going to be dipping your mind into that vat and it's going to affect you. Conversely, the more you take in Scripture, the more you meditate on it, the more you think about it, the more you memorize it, the more you're around people that talk to you about the Word of God, the more the Scripture is going to influence the way you think. That's the nature of the battle. 

And so, what are some simple guidelines? Well, read the Bible. Alright? Yeah, sometimes we say, alright, the things we discuss in this pulpit are very high, and I understand that, because Romans 9-11, all that's very, very complex, there's a lot of deep doctrines. This isn't deep, this is simple, read the Bible. I mean, not right now, but I mean when you get home, read the Bible, read it, read it frequently, read it in a consistent pattern. Read through the Bible, use different strategies. There's all different kinds of ways you can use to read through the Bible. That's what being transformed by the renewing of your mind is about, the saturation of the pure water of the Word just flowing through your mind and cleansing you in a beautiful and a powerful way. 

Charles Spurgeon said our very blood should be Bibline. In other words, they talk about in a negative way, the blood alcohol level, there should be a Bible level in our blood, alright? We are just saturated with the Scripture. When you talk to the person, you're going to get Scripture back. Because we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture that's going to address any and every topic in the Christian life, isn't it? And so the more we are searching out the Scripture, the more we're going to see the wisdom of God in every situation. Go through the Bible once a year for knowledge and breadth. 

George Mueller read through it 200 times. Now, you do the math on that, 50 years twice, four times a year, something like that. I mean, that's incredible. You say, "I have trouble getting through it one time in a year." He went through it on an average three to four times a year, that's incredible. David Livingstone once read the Bible four times in succession while he was detained in a jungle town in Africa. He saturated himself in the Word of God. Billy Graham, I was speaking about his medical missionary father-in-law, Nelson Bell, and he said this, "He made it a point to rise every morning at 4:30 and spent two to three hours in Bible reading. He didn't use that time to read commentaries or write, he didn't do his correspondence or any of his other work, he just read the Scriptures every morning. And he was like a walking Bible encyclopedia. People wondered at the holiness and the greatness of his life." 

Now, I think reading through the Bible gives you knowledge and breadth, a sense of the scope of the redemptive plan of God, and that's so valuable, a world view comes. And as I've said before, Rome wasn't built in a day. You don't get a world view overnight. Little, by little, by little, you start to see things the way God does, and things just get put in place. Breadth, I also believe in knowledge in depth, and that comes through meditation. It's so easy when you're just moving across, so easy to just skip things. We've been reading in the morning as we drive in, Psalm 119. And we got to Psalm 119 this morning, verse 130. "The unfolding of your Word, gives light, it gives understanding to the simple." You have to have the Word of God unpacked for you. You have to open it up like a suitcase with a bunch of good things inside, it's got to be unpacked. If you're reading through quickly, you're not going to see it as much, you've got to pause, and go back after you've done your reading, say, "There's a couple of things that are worth my time, I'm going to meditate on them," and you go and you just think about it. "What does this mean? This noun, this verb, this phrase? Or, what is the significance of this figure in my life? How can I live this out?" 

It's not enough just to know these things, you have to do them, and so you're asking while you're meditating, "Lord, how can this change my life? How can I be transformed by the Scripture?" The unfolding of the Word gives light. Probably, one of the greatest meditations on this is in Psalm 1, it says, "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, whose leaf never withers. Whatever he does prospers." And so, knowledge and breadth is reading though the Bible in a year, or something like that. Knowledge and depth is taking passages and memorizing them, meditating on them so you understand them deeply. 

The Word of God has something to say on every topic you're going to face in your life, so does the world. My question is, who are you going to listen to? For example, the Word of God has things to say about money, and so does the world. The world says that your money is there to make you happy, basically, and that money is the root of all happiness. The more money you have, the more happiness you'll have, that's what the world says. The Word of God says to beware, watch out, because the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. So, be careful about it. But money can be used as a tool to advance the kingdom of Christ, and the way you give it by faith can store up treasure for you in Heaven forever and ever. That's what God says about money, among other things. 

Concerning sex, the world says if it feels good, do it. Anything between consenting adults is fine, and there is no lasting impact on you if you're promiscuous and break the laws of God concerning sex. That's what the world says. God says differently. Marital relations, what I call it, was given for marriage, and it's a good gift from God within those boundaries, a delightful gift. Who are you going to believe, the world or God?  

Concerning time, the world says time, you'll have as much as you need to do what you want with, it's really like money to make you happy. Do whatever you want with your time, and tomorrow is as guaranteed as today is. Go to this or that city, spend a year, carry on business and make money. James Chapter 4, it's a guaranteed thing. Bible says it isn't guaranteed, it's limited, so you better number your days and gain a heart of wisdom because the days are evil. Therefore, redeem the time and be very careful what you do with it. Who are you going to believe? The world on time or God on time?  

On every topic in life, the Bible has something to say, and so does the world. The battle is for the mind. The central message of the Bible is, repent and believe in Christ for the salvation of your sins. If you've come here today and you have never done that, you've never repented and trusted in Christ, trust in Him now. Jesus shed His blood on the cross that we might have eternal life. But I wanna speak to you Christians here for a moment, you don't stop repenting the moment you come to faith in Christ, you start. And then what happens is, repentance is literally thinking differently from then on about everything. Live a life then of repentance, guided by the Word. Let the Word of God take you into topic after topic, and think differently, think like God does. That's how your life will be transformed and be pleasing to Him. Close with me in prayer. 

We are looking now at Romans 12:1-2. We’re going to spend two weeks on it, this time and the next time that I preach on Romans. The outline is balanced. You see, presenting your soul, presenting your body, presenting your mind, presenting your will. That's what we're looking at, but I'm not really going to be talking much about presenting your mind or your will this time, that'll be next time. We're going to focus on the first, namely presenting our bodies. And as we do, we come again to the question of worship. We did it last week when we looked at the doxology, which is the greatest doxology in the Bible, what an incredible section of Scripture. And how it began with that little word, "Oh" which shows the depth of Paul's emotions. His feeling inside his heart about all the doctrine that God had taught him and through him had given to us. And that's the first part of worship. It's an internal moving within our hearts, a moving of delight, and of passion, and of love, and of faith. We believe what we've heard is true, but that's not all, it moves us, doesn't it? It makes us joyful, it moves us emotionally. That's the inside.

But now as we get to Romans 12:1-2, and really Romans 12-16, now we're asking the question, What should we do with our bodies? How can we live? And worship is both of those, isn't it? God has revealed himself to us in the Word, and then there's an internal transformation of joy and faith, and then there's an external pattern of life, and all of that is worship.

Now, we live in a world full of worship, don't we? People are naturally going to worship something. We're religious, by nature. I know that there are some that have been trained in the halls of academia and higher education that claim to be atheists, and I think they are just aggressively suppressing the truth and unrighteousness within themselves that there is a great and a powerful spiritual being, God the creator. For the most part, human beings are religious, and around the world, they're going to find some way to express worship. Now these are, for the most part, man-made expressions of worship, aren't they? You look for example at the Hindus that travel as pilgrims to the River Ganges, which is a really foul place, it's been polluted, and yet that has specific religious significance and they're willing to go in and wash in the River Ganges because it's an act of their Hindu faith. Along the way, they're going to be doing little acts of worship and sacrifice called pooja to some of the millions of Hindu deities. They are religious people. The Muslims, for example will, five times a day, pray toward Mecca in a certain pattern, whether standing, kneeling, lying prostrate back up, and patterns of prayer that they learn from an early age. Once in their lifetime, they hope to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. And there, sometimes you've seen pictures of Muslims bowing down in concentric circles around the Kaaba stone, which is a stone that Muslim faith says came down from heaven pure white, but then was turned black through human sin.

In the remote jungles of Irian Jaya, there are stone age tribes that worship their multiple deities, along the patterns that they learned from their ancestors, handed down from generation to generation. So, we human beings, we are religious. Even when in Christian circles, there are all different kinds of worship. Orthodox churches are filled with ornate and beautiful paintings, there are icons covered in gold which they say help them to worship. Roman Catholic worship focuses on the mass, the sacrifice of the mass, and the focal point is the taking of the Lord's supper. Lutheran services look somewhat similar to Roman Catholic services but they focus on the preaching of the Word. The Anglican services follow a pattern laid down by the Book of Common Prayer. Pentecostal services, if you've ever been to one, are exciting, stimulating times in which the gifts of the Spirit are being used. So they teach in open ways the speaking of tongues, dancing in the aisles. If you like to do that while I'm preaching, feel free. I don't think... You'd be the first in years here, but that's the kind of worship they do there.There's all different kinds of Christian worship. I'm not going to join you if you do that, but I will watch. Is that alright?

But all different kinds of worship and there are different patterns of worship, even within the evangelical movement, there are seeker sensitive churches that use contemporary music and other types of patterns to make the service attractive to unbelievers, all the way to perhaps another extreme of folks that would only sing psalms without musical instruments. All of these within the array of evangelical faith. There are all different kinds of worship, but I say to you that as we look at the doxology last week with the "Oh," that Paul says, the deep passion for God and for doctrine, and the God of the Bible, combined with what we have in Romans 12:1-2, we have here, I believe, the highest expression of Christian worship you will ever find, and everything else pales in comparison with what Paul tells us to do here in Romans 12:1-2, this is worship.

Paul says, "I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercies, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will."

Now we have had 11 chapters of some of the deepest doctrine you will ever hear. Now, Martyn Lloyd-Jones is one of my heroes, he preached 297 sermons in those 11 chapters. I'm less than that. I know some of you don't believe that, but it's true, fewer than that, but still a lot of foundation has been laid. Along the way, as you'll read in Romans 1-11, you will not see a lot of commands. From time to time, there are some commands right in the middle of chapter 6 or some other places, there'll be some commands. But for the most part, Paul has just been laying out what is, what is the truth, what has Christ done, what is the significance of it, who are we in Christ, how are we saved. These are just truths, it's doctrine, it's a foundation. But now we come to that great question that Francis Schaeffer asked so many years ago, How then shall we live?

Now as a preacher who has been preaching in Romans, I couldn't wait till chapter 12 to answer that question. So every sermon, I tried to stop and say, "Okay, based on what we've learned, how then shall we live?" Some sections of Romans, it's harder to do than others. Some are just very theological and theoretical and it's hard to know exactly how we're to live. But Romans 12-16 is Paul's application to the Christian message. This is his answer to the question of, "How shall we live?"

Now, the beautiful thing here as we look at it, Christianity is not merely a way of thinking, neither is it merely a way of living. It is both, friends. It is both. And the pattern that Paul sets for us is, first, we must understand then we can live. It's not a kind of a cut flower morality or ethical system, which isn't connected or rooted to anything. Like for example, Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack. I love Benjamin Franklin, what an interesting man living in the 18th century. He was a printer by trade and he printed something called Poor Richard's Almanack and in it were little proverbs of practical wisdom. You know probably many of them by heart. "A stitch in time saves nine." In other words, try to address a situation before it gets worse. "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." These are just basic everyday life ethics, but it's not connected to the system of doctrine that Christianity is. He was not a believer in Christ and was not trying to connect his ethical approach to the Christian message.

Well, Paul doesn't do that. There's a lot of moralistic systems. Even now, you can listen to business speakers or head coaches that win championships, giving you the top 10 tips on practical daily living, that kind of thing, and people will flock to listen to these folks, and they can command $10,000 or more to tell you how to live your lives. I think we've got it for free here in the Bible, let's just read it. Read 11 chapters of Godly doctrine and then he'll tell you what to do. It's going to get very practical. Romans 12, Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer, treat your enemies in this way, do this with government. He's just going to be going through all of these topics. Romans 12-16, He's going to be telling us how we should live, and so therefore, I'm advocating today a balanced Christian life. And by that, what I mean is, we should not be concerned with doctrine apart from application and nor should we be concerned with application apart from the doctrinal base. Let's follow what Paul has done, 11 chapters of basis now gives way to some of the most practical insights you'll ever have on how to live your life everyday.

So, here we get where the rubber meets the road. Romans 12:1-2, He's going to be starting the whole thing off with this issue of presentation, presenting yourself, and that's what we're looking at this week and the next time as well. Presenting yourself body, soul, mind, will, everything; presented to Christ, presented to God. In Romans 12:3-8, He's going to be teaching us about spiritual gifts. That's going to be an incredible study. I believe everybody is given a spiritual gift and you've got a role to play in the body of Christ. We'll be talking about that. Romans 12:9-21 is just, as I said, very practical applications on how to live your life, a life of love with others, even with your enemies, how to live with others. Romans 13:1-7, that's going to be the Christian and government. Payment of taxes. What is government ? How do we submit to government? He'll be talking about that. The rest of that chapter is again this issue of love for others, with a special application on personal holiness. Personal holiness.

Chapter 14 and on into chapter 15, very important chapter on Christians getting along with each other in the Christian body and not dividing over debatable issues, learning to accept somebody else's servant if he has a different conviction on a debatable issue. Very important in the Christian life. We'll be looking at that in chapter 14 and on into 15. Chapter 15 and the rest of that chapter, He's basically talking about the Jew-Gentile unity issue and how Jews and Gentiles together can be an offering up to God, a sacrifice of praise for him. Chapter 16, a bunch of greetings to people, you probably have never heard of, some of them you have, that is as practical and beautiful as you can imagine, and there's lots of truth there in chapter 16. Friends, this is where the rubber meets the road, and we begin with Romans 12:1-2, the most important of them all.

Now, I want to start from this place. The whole thing is a presentation. If you don't get anything else, get this, God is calling on you to present yourself to Him and He's calling on you to do that everyday. He's calling on you to do that in every way. He's calling on you to present yourself completely to God. That's what He's calling on you to do. Now, I say you must have already presented your soul to Christ or you can't go on. None of the rest of it will matter, you have to have presented your soul to Christ and that is, I believe, in Paul's view when he says, "Therefore brothers," speaking to brothers in Christ, "Therefore brothers, in view of God's mercies," what God has already worked in your life, the central mercy of God, the central mercy of God is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The central mercy of God is the forgiveness of sins through repentance and faith in Christ.

It says in Romans 9:15-16, he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort but on God's mercy, and it is the mercy of God in saving our souls that I have in mind. Now, Romans 12:1, it doesn't come across in all the translations but it is plural. For example, the ESV says, "I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God." It's not just one mercy, it's a whole rainbow of mercies, a whole array of mercies that God has given us and is giving us. But the central is, that the human soul corrupted by sin, enslaved to sin can actually be forgiven in the sight of Almighty God and restored into a right relationship with Him. We call that justification.

We think about what Jesus taught, concerning this matter. In Luke 18, he said the tax collector stood at a distance and he would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "Be merciful to me, a sinner." "And I tell you, [Jesus said] that this man rather than the other went home justified by God." So we were talking about justification by the mercy of God, and in that you presented your soul by faith, and you are in a right relationship with God. Romans 5:1 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Isn't that beautiful? To just know that God is at peace with you through Jesus Christ, that there's no outstanding debt to be paid, that your sins are forgiven. That is the central mercy of the gospel.

Now at that time, you presented your soul to Christ. Jesus said, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" You don't want to lose your soul so you entrusted it to the Savior, and he the Savior of your soul took your soul at that moment, it is his. And at that moment, your soul became his possession and that gladly, you were glad to have it because he made it. He's the one that gave it to you. By faith, you were saying, "My soul is your possession forever." Friends, you do this once for all time, there's no need to do this in an ongoing sense you need to be saved. You need to repent and trust in Jesus. You need to present your soul to Christ. And that's once for all time.

I think, however, there is an ongoing motivation in the Christian life here as well. All it says is, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God." Here's the thing. I think we have already received mercies from God, haven't we? If we're Christians, we have already received mercies from God. But my question is, is that it? Are there any more mercies yet to come? I would say yes and yes and yes, everyday a display of the mercy of God. One of my favorite verses about this, I just love, is Lamentations 3:22-23. It says, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness." And so, I think this is the foundation. We expect to get more mercy. Sometimes we feel like, "God why would you want my body? I'm defiled, I'm sinful." And you need to have confidence that God will, in an ongoing sense, be merciful to you so you can present yourself to him, that there's more mercies yet to come.

So yes, look back at the mercies you've already received. Rejoice in them, delight in them, but there's still more mercies yet to come. And I believe God's going to be raining and showering mercy on you as a Christian from now until the day you die, and that mercy is going to get you all the way to heaven. And so in view of God's mercy, confident in God's mercy, he then gives us this command.

Now what is the command he gives? Well, he tells us that we should present our bodies. "I appeal to you brothers, in view of God's mercies, present your bodies" he says. Now this is amazing! We believe in a spiritual God, He's not made of material stuff. Jesus told us, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

You might think what does this body of mine have to do with worship? Some people are proud of their bodies. A vanishingly small number of people are proud of their bodies. The rest, not so much. And you may think why would God want this thing? Why would he want my body? But God does want your body.

Oliver Cromwell who was the Lord Protector of England in the 17th century was sitting for a portrait, and apparently he was not a handsome man. He had pronounced warts, for example, and the painter said, "We can do amazing things with paint, like just not paint certain things." He said, "No, paint it all, warts and all." It's a very famous saying, "Warts and all." So you may say, "Does God really want my body, warts and all?" I say to you, he does. He wants you to present your body to Him, warts and all, everything.

Now, Scripture has a remarkable ambivalence about our bodies. By that I mean there are some things very negatively said about the body and some things more positively said. Our bodies were originally created in the image of God, holy and blameless before the fall, but they were corrupted by the fall badly. They are headed for the grave where they will meet corruption head-on. And we know that. Our bodies are programmed by habits of sin, and so we can talk about this body of sin or the body of death, and that's a big problem. Paul says he beats his body and makes it a slave so He's almost suspicious of his body, it's a problem for him to some degree and yet he says in another place, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.

And they are the only vehicle we have to serve Christ in this physical world. And so there's an ambivalence about our bodies. There are problems, but then there are these blessings. God wants us to present our bodies to him.

Present: To Put at One’s Disposal  

Now, what does that mean, present? What does it mean to present your body? Romans 6:13-14 already covered this, and just listen to the verses, you can study it another time, but Romans 6:13-14 says, "Do not offer," or "do not present," "the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness, for sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace." That's the same teaching, we have here. There's a direct connection between what's taught in Romans 6 and what's being taught here in Romans 12. It's the idea of presenting your body, specifically presenting the members of your body, the parts of your body to God.

Now, I think the best picture I've ever found of this, and it's stuck with me ever since the day I learned it, and I hope it'll help you, is the picture we get the night that Jesus was arrested. In Matthew 26, the account is told of Jesus being arrested and they send a detachment of soldiers, that may have been as many as 600 soldiers, to go arrest Jesus with torches, lanterns and weapons. You know that just at the moment that he was about to be arrested, Peter tried to save Jesus's life. What an interesting moment. When I get to Heaven, I'll say, "Peter, what were you thinking?" Of course He's going to say to me that about a thousand times more than I'm going to say it to him, so fair's fair, but I think I'm willing to pay the price to ask him. What were you thinking?

And Jesus deals with Peter and you remember he says an array of things, but it culminates in this, he says this. "Do you think I cannot call on my Father," listen, "And he would at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels." That's the exact same Greek word we've got here, 12:1. "Put at my disposal," Jesus said. Now, let me ask a question. With what attitude would the angels come down from heaven, if Jesus had asked for them? Would they not come and say, "Reporting for duty, sir, what do you want?"

"See those 600 men over there? They're a problem to me." "No problem to us, Lord, we'll take care of them." Would they question the Lord in any way? They would be ready to do gladly anything Jesus commanded them to do. They are servants, they are ready to serve. And the angels are always like that. It wouldn't have been unusual in the garden in Gethsemane. They are always ready to serve even in the Book of Revelation, when it involves pouring out bowls of wrath and a third of mankind dies. They will do anything God tells them to do because they totally trust Almighty God, and well they should. He is a perfect being, righteous in all he does. And so the angels are ready to obey all the way, right away, with a happy spirit. That's what they do.

And they would have come, and been put at Jesus's disposal. In other words, the Father would have said, "Jesus, they are yours to command, whatever you say they will do." That is what Paul is urging us to do with our bodies, present them to Jesus for his command, offer them to him as your personal commanding officer.

Now, you might say, "How do I do this?" Well, I think you ought to begin every day in your quiet time, with a simple prayer like this, "Lord Jesus, I am yours. You bought me with the price of your blood. I belong to you, I am under obligation to you. I am yours." And that's a beautiful thing, isn't it? Isn't it beautiful to say to Jesus, "I am yours, you bought me." "I am a bond-servant of Christ," as the Apostle Paul said. You present your whole self and I think you should do it every morning in your quiet time. You offer your whole self to him. But I actually think you ought to go beyond that and you ought to offer the parts of your body to him in prayer as well. I don't think you have to do this every day, but I think it's helpful to say, "Lord, my mouth is yours, I pray that I would speak words that only glorify you, and build the body of Christ up today. Lord, my hands are yours, I pray that they would only do things that I'll be glad they did on Judgement Day. I want my hands to be instruments of righteousness, not of wickedness. I want my feet to carry me in the places where you want me to serve, that's where I want to walk, nowhere else." You're just presenting the parts of your body.

And there's nothing strange about this, the Lord made it. Remember what we learned in the doxology, from him and through him and to him are all things. Those parts of your body, they belong to him anyway, you're just offering to him, what's already his. Say, "Lord, I want my ears to be yours today, I want to listen to the Word of God. I want to listen to other people talk so carefully that I can discern what their needs are, and find out how I can minister. I want my ears to be yours, Lord. I want my fingers to be used, I want my stomach only to be used for your glory, I don't want my stomach to be my god, my appetites to be my god, I want everything in my body to be yours for your glory."

I think this is exactly what Frances Ridley Havergal did in her hymn Take My Life and Let It Be. She goes through every part of her life and just offers it up to God, as a sacrifice to him. Now, notice that it says "living sacrifices." Have you wondered what that means to offer your body to him as a living sacrifice? Well, we know that sacrificial imagery is powerful throughout the Bible. I mean, right from the very, in my opinion, right from the very beginning when sin entered the world, so did sacrifice, right away. Because God clothed the naked Adam and Eve with animal skins that he got from what I believe is the first sacrifice. Then Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did, it was an animal sacrifice. Noah offered some of those seven clean animals that he took on the ark, and God smelled the fragrant aroma after the flood and swore in his heart, "Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. We know the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they set up altars wherever they went, and they offered up sacrifices. We know that God commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice, so we understand sacrifice.

Now, I've taught before here that the sacrificial system is one of the clearest ways of understanding what Jesus did on the cross. There are lessons of the sacrificial system that lead you right to the cross of Jesus Christ, don't they? All sin deserves the death penalty. The death penalty can be paid by a substitute and the substitute cannot be an animal. We're waiting for Jesus. And then Jesus comes and John the Baptist says, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," all of that points to the cross. But I'm saying to you now that the sacrificial system teaches us also how we live after we've come to faith in Christ. We are to see our lives as a sacrifice, we are to offer a sacrifice to God.

A Living Sacrifice

Now, what is a living sacrifice? Well, the animals were put on the altar and they were killed once and that was it, you gave them once, they died once and that was it, it was finished. God is actually commanding us to something even higher here, you are to kind of go on being a sacrifice the rest of your life. It's kind of like a constant death and life issue. We're constantly giving ourselves over to death so that we may live with God every moment.

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, think about what Jesus said in Luke 9:23-24, Jesus said to them all, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." So there's an ongoing living pattern of, "Not my will but yours be done, Lord. I'm willing to die."

He tells you to go witness to somebody and you don't want to do it and He's like, "Oh, it's so tough, you die to yourself, you take up the cross, you're a living sacrifice, you go." He wants you to put a certain pattern of sin to death, it's hard to do, it hurts, it's difficult. He wants you to die to yourself and to do what God calls you to do. He calls on you to fast and pray for some issue. It's hard for you to do. All day long, you feel those hunger pains, but you're dying to yourself, you're a living sacrifice, taking up your cross and following Jesus.

Amy Carmichael, the great missionary in India, who worked with young girls that she was helping to rescue from temple prostitution, working with orphans in India did a great work. Her biography was written by Elizabeth Elliot, entitled A Chance to Die. And I think Amy Carmichael and all the missionaries that worked, and she had a rigorous application process. If you wanted go work with Amy Carmichael, you had to go through lots of process to join her in her work. She basically only wanted people there that saw the ministry as exactly that, a chance to die. A chance to die. And what I say is that every morning, God's mercies are new, but so also are the opportunities to die to yourself and live for God. And if you do that, if you will be a living sacrifice, you will find your life, but if on the other hand you refuse, you shrink back, you will lose your life.

That's what the Apostle Paul said, that's what Jesus said, that's what we're learning here. A living sacrifice is much more costly than a dead one, isn't it? Well, that's once and you never see that animal again. It might have hurt a little bit, said, it's a sacrifice, like David said, "I will not offer to God a sacrifice that costs me nothing," but even a bull, you just pay it once and it's done. He's asking for an ongoing gift of yourself to him every moment.

And he says it must be holy and pleasing to God, without blemish, pure and holy. We have to free our bodies from everything that defiles and contaminates them. It's got to be holy and pleasing to God or we cannot offer them, I think about 2 Corinthians 7:1, it says, "Therefore since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." You got to detoxify yourself. We are surrounded by spiritual and physical toxins, and we are to be living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

I think it's not long before any of us thinking about this topic knows that we're at least talking in part about sexual purity. We live in a sex-crazed culture. There's internet pornography, there are movies and there are just images around all the time, that pull us toward immorality. We are called on to be holy, holy in our bodies, holy in our minds and that's what he wants, living sacrifice, and he calls it our spiritual act of worship, this act of worship is the basic act of worship that God is calling on you to give. Now, believe me, I am not minimizing what we come to do here on a Sunday morning. Not at all. It is so important what we do, the singing we do, the listening to the Scripture, the prayers, everything, even now, the hearing of the Word, all these things are important. But if you want to ask, "How can I worship God," Romans 12:1-2 is telling you how to do it. Present your body to him, that is worship.

Spiritual Act of Worship

Now, it says your spiritual act of worship, the Greek word is interesting, it's related to the English word "logic," and sometimes it says "reasonable act of worship" or a "logical act," other times, "spiritual act." Basically, I think the idea is that this is what makes sense in the spiritual realm, this is the sacrifice that makes sense for you as a Christian. That is your spiritual act of worship.

Now, behind all of this is a phenomenal concept that has not been well understood for most of the history of the Christian church, but I think the Reformation made a major shift and helped us to understand, and that is this basic idea, this is huge. All of life is sacred. There's not a difference between things that God cares about and things he doesn't. Things that are more holy to God than other things. All of it is sacred. No, don't misunderstand, I'm not saying there's no sin in the world, I'm just saying that there's no forum or no place where you can't be sacred in that forum. All of it is a possibility.

Now, in ancient Israel, you know that the 12 tribes entered the Promised Land and each one of those tribes got a physical inheritance, a chunk of land that would be their inheritance, except one. Do you know what tribe did not get a physical inheritance? It was the tribe of Levi, the Levites. What did they get? They got the sacrificial system, that was their inheritance. They got to offer the sacrifices, they got to eat the meat that came with that, they got small parts of land that they could live on, but they didn't get a chunk of inheritance the way everybody else did. And that was considered an honor, that the Levites got the sacrificial system and within them, the line of Aaron, they were the high priests and they got to offer up the sacrifices, but the Levites as a whole, their inheritance was this act of worship, this sacrificial system.

But from that, came a bifurcation in Israel between the sacred and the common. And therefore those that were involved in holy pursuits, reading the scriptures, praying, offering sacrifices, they were at a higher plane spiritually than the common folks. You see this attitude in John's Gospel when the Jewish leaders are saying something like this, "This mass of people that knows nothing about the law, there's a curse on them." They looked on themselves as higher and better. In Roman Catholicism, medieval Catholicism, that got embraced. There was the priestly class, you had priests, nuns, monks, and all that. They would separate themselves out from everyday life, and they would live in monasteries or they'd live in cloisters and they would live out their holy lives in that way.

The medieval Roman Catholic historian Eusebius said it this way. "Two ways of life were given by law of Christ to his church. The one is above nature and beyond common human living. Wholly and permanently separate from the common customary life of mankind, it devotes itself to the service of God alone. Such then is the perfect form of the Christian life and the other more humble, more human permits men to have minds for farming, for trade and for other more secular interests as well as for religion, and a kind of secondary grade of piety is given to them." Do you see the difference? You got your really holy people, the priests, the nuns, the monks, all the way up to archbishops and the popes and all that, and then you got everybody else, and they're at a lower level in terms of spirituality. That is not in the Bible. If God wants you to present your physical body as a living sacrifice, that means that everything your body is involved in can be worship. All of it.

I would argue it must be worship. In those cloisters, the monasteries and all that, they divided up the tasks between the sacred and the profane. There were the sacred tasks, reading the scripture, chanting, prayer, the Lord's supper. The profane tasks, common tasks, were farming, washing the dishes, preparing meals, eating, all of those things were lower. Even worse were those people that spent their whole lives doing those things, they were profane people, common people. The Reformation came along and said, "Enough of that. It's not biblical." Martin Luther, John Calvin, William Tyndale, they recovered this vision. Look at this, William Tyndale said this, "If we look externally, there is a difference betwixt washing of dishes and preaching of the Word of God, but as touching to please God none at all." That is powerful, that's powerful.

Williams Perkins put it this way, "The action of a shepherd in keeping sheep is as good a work before God as is the action of a judge in giving sentence or of a magistrate in ruling or a minister in preaching." That means everything in life can be sacred, everything you do can and should be an act of worship to God. The key verse for this, in my opinion, is 1 Corinthians 10:31. It says there, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God."

Now, my friends, I'm going to get as practical as I possibly can get. Can you eat a ham sandwich to the glory of God? Can you do it? Go on, nod or shake, what do you think, yes, or no? Is it possible to eat a ham sandwich to the glory of God? I say it is. As a matter of fact, if you're going to eat a ham sandwich, go ahead and do it to the glory of God, or don't do it at all. Can you wash the dishes to the glory of God? Yes. Does everyone who wash his dishes do so to the glory of God? I myself have washed dishes, not to the glory of God. It can be done, but I have done it the other way, occasionally. Ask my wife, or don't. I mean, she'll tell the truth, sometimes I wash dishes to the glory of God, and sometimes I don't, but I can do it always to the glory of God. I can cut my finger nails to the glory of God. Not right now, but I can do it at other times. I can dust a book shelf to the glory of God, I can make a phone call, I can pay a bill, I can put a vacuum cleaner away to the glory of God, I can get my tires rotated to the glory of God, I can exercise to the glory of God, I can go on a diet to the glory of God, I can eat a Thanksgiving feast to the glory of God. I can do all of these things to the glory of God, because there's not a separation between the sacred and the profane. It doesn't exist. There's just a difference between whether you're doing something to the glory of God or not. You are to be constantly a living sacrifice. Now, what's the key?

The key has to do with the mind and we don't have time today. I decided a while ago we had to do it in two messages. You have to do it by presenting your mind. It's the way you think, it has to do with the way you think, and we're going to talk about that next time. You've got to present your mind to God, and it has to do with what's affecting you. You can either present your mind to the surrounding culture and be polluted by it, or you can present your mind to God through his Word and be transformed by it. But it's the presentation of the mind, and from that comes a presentation of the will. I will choose to do what God wills for me to do.

Okay, so we come to the application of the sermon, that means we're done. Because I've done nothing but application this whole time. Well, let me ask a basic question, "Are you doing this? Are you presenting your bodies as living sacrifices? Are you presenting every moment of your life, are you presenting your hands, your mouth, your eyes, everything to God as a living sacrifice, are you living this kind of a life? Are you spending your money to the glory of God or not spending it? Are you praying to the glory of God or not? Are you interacting with other people to the glory of God or not?" Everything can be his. There's no such thing as sacred or profane. Offer yourselves to him, as those who have been brought from death to life and offer every part of your body to him as instruments of righteousness, for sin shall not be your master, because you're not under law, but under grace. Close with me in prayer.

We're looking tonight, at a section of the Scripture that I was preaching on this morning, in Romans 11, if you just turn there for a moment, we're going to spend much of our time in the Old Testament. But in Romans 11:25-26, Paul says concerning this incredible mystery that I talked about this morning, he says, "Brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, so that you may not be conceded. Israel has experienced the hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in." And then he says in Verse 26, "And so, all Israel will be saved." And then he seeks to support that from Scripture, "As it is written," he says, "The deliverer will come from Zion, He will turn godlessness away from Jacob."

Now, we have seen consistently, the way the Apostle Paul seeks to support his doctrine from the Word of God. I still think one of the most incredible, one of the most exciting times in redemptive history, that I would love to have been there when this happened, is when Jesus after His death, after His resurrection, spent 40 days with His disciples, teaching them the Old Testament Scripture. That's what He spent His time doing, that and eating fish. One of them I can understand the other I can't, and never will, but that's what He did. He spent time eating with them and He spent time opening the Word of God. And so, a fisherman from Galilee named Peter, stands up in the day of Pentecost and just spouting one Old Testament Scripture after another, showing things, saying things that have been fulfilled that the Jews had not noticed, had not seen. 

And I'll tell you this, the longer I go in my Christian life, the more I go on studying the Word of God, the more amazed and astonished I am at the interconnection of the Word of God, the consistency of the Word of God, the way that the New Testament is so completely and totally based on the teachings of the Old Testament. How they are not two different messages, they're not two different words. Something that went up to a certain point, and then it was abrogated, and we go in some different direction. I think this is so obvious from the way the Apostle Paul behaved in his ministry.

We see again and again, in the life of Paul, how he sought to establish his doctrine by reference to the Old Testament Scripture. For example, in Acts 9, right after his conversion, it says, "Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus and at once, he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem, among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priest?" Acts 9:22 says, "Yet, Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ." Now, how do you think he did that? What did he use in the synagogue of Damascus to prove that Jesus is the Christ? Well, we know clearly from his later behavior, it must be the Scripture that he was using, it must be the Old Testament Scripture. For example, in Acts 17:1-3, it says, "When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica," that's in the Northern part of Greece, modern Greece, "Thessalonica, where it was a Jewish synagogue. As his custom was," that's a key phrase, "As His custom was, Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbath days," listen, "He reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead." This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ, he said.

And so there he is, taking the Old Testament Scripture, the law, the prophets, the writings, and using the Scripture to prove that Jesus is the Christ. And again, later on that same missionary trip, he goes down to Berea, and we hear about the Bereans much. We desire ourselves to be Bereans in this sense, how it says in Acts 17:11, "The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." So clearly, again, there in Berea, what is Paul doing? But opening up the Old Testament Scriptures, seeking to prove and to establish his doctrine thereby. He does the same thing throughout the book of Romans, we've seen it again and again. Look at the very beginning of the book of Romans, look at Romans Chapter 1, Verse 1-4. It is true that in eons past, I preached on this section of Scripture. You can look in the tape record it's there.

I don't know what was going on in redemptive history at that point, but I did preach on Romans, 1:1-4. But you don't need to listen to my tape, just open up in Romans 1, there it is, now Verse 1-4, and this is what it says. Right at the beginning of Romans, it says, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God. The Gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures." So the Gospel is promised ahead of time in the Old Testament Scripture. That Scripture regarding His Son. And so he goes on from there. And then again, in Romans 1:16-17, as we've heard many times, "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is from faith to faith." And here's that key expression you're going to find again and again in Paul, "Just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith." He's constantly establishing his doctrine, really right from the beginning in Romans 1, by the Scripture.

In Romans 3, he goes through these quotations, one quotation after another. Romans 3, verses 10 and following, it says, "As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have turned aside, they've together become worthless. There is no one who does good, no, not one. Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, the way of peace, they do not know." He is just lumping one Old Testament Scripture on another to prove the universality of sin. He's using the Scripture, to prove this. He does it again in Romans 4 when he's talking about justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. He says in Romans 4, "What then shall we say that Abraham our forefather discovered in this matter? If in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does the Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.'" So there it is, he's trying to establish again, and again, his doctrine from Scripture.

Now, whatever he did in Romans 1-8, in seeking to do this, whatever he did to establish his doctrine in the basis, the Old Testament Scripture, only escalates greatly, it greatly intensifies when it comes to this whole question of the Jews in Romans 9-11. I've counted at one point, 27 different quotations or illusions in these three chapters. He is super saturating Romans 9-11 with one quote after another, and his favorite source seems to be Isaiah the prophet. He's going again and again to Isaiah and to the other prophets and to the writings, to prove the doctrines he's establishing. Romans 9, he talks about Jacob and Isaiah, and he talks about the experience at the burning bush with Moses, he's quoting again and again, "I lay a stone in Zion, a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." He talks about Isaiah crying out boldly, "Although the number of Israelites be like the grain of the sea, only the remnant will be saved." He's quoting all of these Scriptures, one after the other.

But now he gets to Romans 11:26, and then he's seeking to prove this mystery, the mystery we talked about this morning, namely; all Israel will be saved. What is he going to reach for to prove this mystery? He's already told us that it's a mystery, and so therefore, he's going to be reaching for a Scripture that doesn't openly and directly teach it but alludes to it or sets the stage for it. That's why it's a mystery, it's not openly taught but it's there, the foundation is there concerning the salvation, the future of salvation of the Jews.

And this is what he reaches for, he reaches for Isaiah 59:20. So turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 59:20, you can keep your finger in Romans 11 if you want. And I want you to compare it. Now, one of the reasons I'm doing this, was something I read as I've mentioned this morning, and I've mentioned before, on a Jews for Judaism website. You ought to go there, it really is amazing to look at some of the way that these Jewish folks seek to deal with the prophetic scriptures that we hold so dear. I believe, as I've been reading their website, looking at the way that they seek to refute Christian handling of Scripture, that I feel like I'm back in the ancient days sitting next to Paul as he reasons with the Jews in the synagogue and they won't listen. And trying to figure out, "What are they going to say, that Isaiah 53?" Well, if you want to know, go and find out. How could they ever refute what Jesus said in Psalm 1:10 or in Psalm 22? "They have pierced my hands and my feet." You go and find out, it is so disappointing actually. You keep thinking, "Well, maybe there's some insight that we haven't seen," but all you end up seeing is hardness of heart.

That's what you end up. You're looking right at that veil that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3, that covers their hearts where they cannot see the plain teaching in Daniel 7, about the Son of Man receiving glory and honor from all the nations and tribes and peoples. It's an incredible thing that they just cannot see the truth of the Scripture. But here he's going to Isaiah 59:20. And Jews for Judaism says Paul is twisting the Scripture, he's twisting it. So I thought, "I'm going to take this one on, we're going to look at it." And the more I looked at it, the more amazed I was. Have you ever been at the ocean where you're bobbing on the ground, feeling the sand under your feet, and you keep going out a little deeper, and then all of a sudden the bottom drops out. And you're treading water if you can, if not you need to hurry back and be on the beach, because the bottom just fell out from under your feet. And that's what I feel like, it's just incredibly deep. And it shouldn't surprise us because that's exactly where we're going, in Romans 11, where Paul cries out, "Oh the depth of the riches, the wisdom and the knowledge of God." It's a deep thing that he's getting at here. But what Paul does is he reverses, exactly reverses the language of Isaiah 59:20.

Now, if you're going to say, "Did Paul believe that Isaiah was inspired by the Holy Spirit as it was written?" No question about it, but what he's doing is he's going actually beyond what Isaiah says now in the New Testament, the new covenant, with the new insights and information we have with the coming of Jesus and all that, and he's not in any way contradicting what Isaiah says, but he actually is intensifying it and he does it in a way that perfectly fits into the context of Isaiah 59. To some degree, he's understood it better than any of his modern detractors ever could. What does he do? Well, let's compare it. In Verse 26 of Romans 11, it says, "The redeemer will come from Zion, He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." But then in Isaiah 59:20, it says, "The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins."

So there's two halves to this, and he turns both of them backwards. In the first one, it is either the Redeemer comes from Zion, or the Redeemer goes to Zion, now which is it? Secondly, is He coming to people who have already repented of their sins or is He going to come and turn godlessness away from Jacob? Which of the two is it? Let's take the first clause and try to understand it. Namely, this idea; did the Redeemer or does the Redeemer come from Zion or does He go to Zion?

Now, the word Zion as you study it in the Scripture, the first time it's ever mentioned is in 2 Samuel 5:67, where it says that King David conquered the city of Jerusalem. That's the first time the word Zion ever appears in the Bible. It says there, "The king and his men marched to Jerusalem to attack the Jebusites who live there. And the Jebusites who are living there, said to David, 'You'll not get in here, even the blind and the lame can ward you off.'" Well, Jerusalem is actually notoriously difficult to conquer. It's way up on a mountain and the sides drop off all around and it's really, very, very difficult to conquer. All the armies that came to lay seed to Jerusalem had to deal with the physical lay of the land. It's a mountain, it's tough to get up to. It makes it difficult, but David found a way.

And so therefore it says, "Nevertheless, David captured," now, listen what it says. "The fortress of Zion, the City of David." Now, that's the first time the word Zion appears, it is Jerusalem, the City of Jerusalem. And this use is repeated again and again and again, Zion equals Jerusalem. But it's more than that, Zion becomes a symbol of the place where God dwells with man on Earth, the place where God has fellowship with the human race. This is signified by the coming of the Ark of the Covenant, and then later on with Solomon, when he builds the temple, and this is the place, above the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant where God Almighty is going to be meeting with the Jews, and it's represented by what they say, the Shekinah glory, the visible representation of the glory of God. And you must know it is not the full glory, none of us can handle that. "No one can see my face and live" God said to Moses, and that is true. But there's a representational glory that comes down and fills that place. And it's a sense of the presence of God in Zion. A place where God is dwelling with man, and there it is, it's in Jerusalem, the City of God, so to speak.

And so you see again and again in Psalms, just look at the word Zion, in a concordance in Psalms and it's there again and again. It says, "Great is the Lord and," this is Psalm 48, "Great is the Lord and greatly be praised, and the city of our God, His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, it is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion in the far north, it's the city of the great King." So Zion is the city of the great King, and Jesus talks about that later when He says, "Do not swear by Jerusalem for it's the city of the great King. It's the place where the King lives." King David, the city of David, was the first to be connected with this idea of Zion, so there it is, Mount Zion, the city of the great King and within her citadels, God has made Himself known as a fortress. So it's the idea of God dwelling with the great King on Mount Zion, the place where God and man together dwell, it's Jerusalem in the Old Testament.

The problem is, the Jews did not keep the covenant. They did not obey the covenant of God, they broke the covenant by their idolatry, and by their sinfulness, and their oppression of the poor, they disobeyed God. And so therefore, in one of the most devastating chapters Ezekiel 10 and then again in Ezekiel 11, we have represented the movement of the glory of God away from Jerusalem. The glory of God moves away from the temple, goes to the threshold of the temple, pauses there, takes a while. It's like, I guess a chapter and a half before the journey finally is consummated, and basically, the idea is the glory of God has departed from Jerusalem, moves away from the temple, it moves to the threshold, it moves out of the city and up and gone. And it's a tragic thing, because of the wickedness of the Jews, because of their disobedience. Unless we Gentiles think we do any better, we wouldn't. The Jews were chosen so that they would represent us just like Adam did, and so we wouldn't have done any better than they. But because of their sin, the glory of God departed from Zion. This was perfectly and completely and forever in redemptive history consummated when the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah. "Rejoice O daughter of Zion, your King is coming to you riding on a donkey," it says, but they rejected Him by killing Him.

And Jesus predicted this, He knew this would happen and so therefore He laments over Jerusalem, and He says in Matthew 23, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Behold, your house is left to you desolate." That means empty. "For you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Matthew 24:1, "Then Jesus left the temple." Let me tell you something, there's a direct connection to Ezekiel 10 and 11 right there. Jesus walks out of the temple, Jesus was the glory of Israel. And so in effect at that moment, Jerusalem stopped being Mount Zion, stopped being the place where God and man together dwell. Stopped being the city of the great King. Does that mean there's no Zion anymore? No, there is a new Jerusalem. There is in effect the heavenly Jerusalem. Take a minute and... You've got your finger here in Isaiah 59, we'll go back to it, but look over at Galatians Chapter 4, for a minute.

Galatians 4 and Verse 21 and following, Paul is working with the Gentiles who want to become Jews, and he's saying what do you want to do that for? "Why do you want to labor under a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? Why would you want to do it?" "Tell me you who want to be under the law, aren't you aware of what the law says?" So he's reasoning with Gentiles who wants to take on the yoke, the burden of all of the stipulations and commandments and all that, of the law of Moses. And why would you want to do that? And he's arguing as a Jew in that regard, but here he says, "Tell me," Verse 21, "You who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as a result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants, one covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, for she is in bondage, or slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free and she is our mother. For it is written, 'Be glad, O barren woman who bears no children. Break forth and cry aloud, you have no labor pains. Because more are children of the desolate woman than of who has a husband.'"

So what are we talking about here? The Jerusalem that's below, it's not the real Jerusalem anymore. It's like Hagar, it's like the son of the slave woman in bondage to the law. But there is a Jerusalem that's above, and she is our mother, it's the heavenly Jerusalem. You get the same thing in Hebrews 12, take a minute and look over there. There, the author to Hebrews talks about Zion as well, and he says, in Hebrews 12:18, he says, "You have not come to a mountain that can be touched." That is so significant. Says, "You've not come to a mountain that can be touched," that's not the point, you've not come to a place where you can touch the rocks and the stones and compare and consider the walls like a physical Jerusalem.

"You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire to darkness, gloom and storm, to a trumpet blast with such a voice speaking words, that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded. If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned. The site was so terrifying that Moses said, 'I am trembling with fear.'" That's Mount Sinai, that's the Jerusalem that's below, that's the Jerusalem of bondage, that's the old way. He says, "It's not what you've come to here in the new covenant, but you have come to Mount Zion." See there it is, there is a Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, do you see it? So Hebrews 12:22 establishes the connection now between Mount Zion and a heavenly Jerusalem. There's a heavenly Mount Zion. It is the city of the living God. Jesus said that Zion is the city of the great King, and so it is, but who's the great King? It is Jesus. And where is Jesus ruling? Where is He reigning? Well, in Zion. Where's Zion? Is not the Jerusalem that's below. And so therefore, if you go back to Romans, you don't have to turn there, but just listen, you know what it says. The deliverer will come from Zion.

The new Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. "Yes," Isaiah said, "He's going to come to Zion," because that was his perspective. That's the way he was looking, but Paul says, "Let's go up to the next level, He's going to be coming from Zion, He's going to be sending forth His Spirit, He's going to remove that spirit of stupor from the Jews. The Deliverer will come from the heavenly Zion, and He's going to turn godlessness away from Jacob." Did Paul make a mistake? What do you think? Do you really think he made a mistake in reversing the order, or was he instead, establishing the Christ-centered nature of Israel's future? The heavenly nature. And you know what the future holds for Jerusalem. It says in Revelation 21, "Behold I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband." That's where Jerusalem is, "The Jerusalem that's below is a slave," says Paul in Galatians 4, "But the Jerusalem that's above, she's our mother and she gives birth to spiritual children." So the Deliverer comes from Zion.

What about the second phrase? "He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." Isaiah 59:20, if you look there right on the page, said, "He's going to come to those in Jacob who repent of their sins." Jews for Judaism says basically what's going to happen is the Messiah is going to wait in heaven until the Jews finally... To paraphrase what they say, Get their act together and start obeying the law. And once they finally and completely obey the law of Moses, then almost as a reward, they get their Messiah. Oh, how repugnant is that? And how wrong-headed? Will it ever happen friends? If we waited for 10 millennia, would they ever perfectly obey the law of Moses? Paul already established in Romans 3, that it was impossible. But Isaiah 59 says it very plainly. Look at Isaiah 59, you'll see how consistent Paul is here.

Right at the very beginning, Verse 1, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor His ear too dull hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear, for your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wicked things. No one calls for justice, no one pleads his case with integrity, they rely on empty arguments and speak lies, they conceive trouble and give birth the evil. They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider's web, whoever eats their eggs will die. When one is broken and adder is hatched, their cobwebs are useless for clothing. They cannot cover themselves, with what they make their deeds are evil deeds, the acts of violence are in their hands." They should sound familiar to anybody who knows Romans 3 very well, he directly quotes this. "Their feet are swift to shed blood, their feet rush into sin, they're swift to shed innocent blood, their thoughts are evil thoughts, ruin and destruction mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know." He's quoting that directly in Romans 3.

 Do you think he doesn't know Isaiah 59? He knows it better than any of us ever will, but he's reading, and he said, "What is Isaiah teaching about the people of God, they are enslaved to sin." Now, later in Isaiah 59, look at the middle of Verse 15, after he goes through more and more verses of this, I'm not going to read all of it, you can read it later, but he just makes it very obvious and clear that the Jews as a nation are enslaved to sin and there's nothing that can be done, they're just saturated in sin, just as we are. "There's no difference," Paul says, "Between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Everybody's the same, but the Jews were this way. Right in the middle of Verse 15, look what it says, "The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one. He was appalled that there was no one to intervene, so His own arm worked salvation for Him and His own righteousness sustained him." What is the perspective? God is looking down from heaven on His own people and He's saying, "There is no Savior there, there never will be. There is no one righteous, then there's no to Redeemer."

So where is the Redeemer going to come from? He's going to come from heaven, God if He's going to save these people, He's got to do it, He's got to come from heaven by the power of the Spirit and He's got to save His own people. And so "the deliverer will come from Zion, and He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." If he doesn't do it, it will never happen. We could be waiting for another two millennia, 10 millennia, it wouldn't matter, they would never of themselves turn away from sin, none of us would. Friends, salvation is from the Lord. That's what Paul's doing here with this quote. He's not making a mistake, he's going to a much higher level. And he's saying all Israel will be saved when God comes, when He moves, when the Deliverer comes from Zion, and when he turns godlessness away from Jacob, so godlessness will be turned away, and God will reign and He will rule. And the Zion that's above, she's going to give birth in one day to a whole nation of people.

Look at Isaiah 66 and we'll finish there. Isaiah 66 talks about this, and this is the language I think Paul was using in Galatians 4. Isaiah 66:7, "Before she goes into labor, she gives birth, before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son. Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day? Or a nation be brought forth in a moment yet, no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children." Do you see that? If you take that together with Galatians 4, the heavenly Zion is going to give birth to a nation at once. Now, what is that but the salvation of the Jews? What could that be but that God is going to take that spirit of stupor, that hardness away and in one day, so to speak, they will turn to their own Messiah. A nation will be born in a moment. That's revival friends, that's the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God. Does God have that kind of power? Does He have the kind of power to save a whole nation in an incredibly short amount of time, like a day? Yes, He can do it. No sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.

Verse 9, "'Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?' Says the Lord. 'Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?' Says your God. Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her all you who love her. Rejoice greatly with her, all you who mourn over her, for you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts. You will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance." This is talking about the restoration of the Jews, friends. And Zion will give birth to her children in one day, a nation will be born. Friends this is incredible. I think Isaiah is like this whole world that has to be discovered. We could go through it again and again and again, and miss all these kinds of details.

But let me tell you in summary, Paul didn't make a mistake. Our friends at Jews for Judaism, let's sit down and talk. Let's see if Paul really did understand the message of Isaiah 59. The message is you can't save yourself, you never will. None of us will, none of us can, but the Deliverer comes from Zion, from heaven, by the power of the Spirit of God, and He, by His sovereign power turns godlessness away from Jacob.

Now, what application do we take from this? First of all, just be in awe at the Scripture, just realize there's more there than you thought there was. Never imagine, when you come to a contradiction that there was something wrong in Paul's mind, and if only he knew what we know today he wouldn't have made that mistake. Heaven forbid, he knew exactly what he was talking about. What he was doing is he was establishing the sovereignty of God over salvation. And so, therefore, secondly, as you're praying for yourself, and you want your own forms of godlessness to be turned away, you've come to the right Savior. That's what the Redeemer comes to do. And so when you say, "Lord turn me away from anything that's ungodly," He has the power to do it, that's exactly the work He's doing all over the world, He has power over our own hearts, power over sin.

And again, be faithful and praying for the Jews. Pray for the day when these things will be completed, when these things will be fulfilled. You say, "Well what's the purpose in praying for things that God said He's going to do anyway? I want to pray for unpredictable things, I want to pray for things He hasn't said He's going to do." Listen, let's pray for what He said He's going to do. Jesus did that and the high priest in prayer, "Father, You gave them to me to save them, and I'll save them." There is no question that we should be praying for what God has promised He will do. Let's pray that all Israel will be saved. And then let's be active in Evangelism toward them. Let's see if we can seek out Jewish friends, neighbors, and others, and say, "Don't you want to be part of it? Well, I'm looking forward to sitting down at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Aren't you jealous yet? I'll keep talking till you all. I want to talk until you just want to be there through faith in Christ.

Close in prayer with me if you will. Father, we thank you for the depth of your Word, we thank you that we can be totally confident that there are no errors in the Scripture. We thank You that Paul chose to quote Isaiah 59, the way he did.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Psalm 127. The main subject of the sermon is how children are blessings from God.

Take your Bibles and look at Psalm 127 this morning. This morning is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. By sanctity, we mean that we believe as Christians that human beings are sacred and set apart unlike any other physical creation in the world. We believe the foundation of this is right in Genesis Chapter 1, in which God said, "Let us make man in our image and in our likeness, and let them rule, let them be fruitful and multiply, and let them rule over the earth." And so we believe that we are in a different category than the animals or any other creation. We are unique and special. Sanctity of Human Life.

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the infamous Roe versus Wade decision, in which state laws banning abortion were declared to be unconstitutional, much to the dismay of abortion advocates, the issue is not going away. It's not settling into the dustbin of history. It's not receding in the national consciousness. It's not going away much to the dismay of those that thought that the Supreme Court decision would end the matter for good. It's not going away. Much to their dismay, the issue continues to stand in front of America, screaming like an injustice to be righted, like a victim pleading to be saved, like a nation being held hostage, and it won't go away.

Perhaps they felt that clever slogans like "Every Child a Wanted Child" and other type things that are put on signs would erase some basic truths, but they won't. And so abortion continues to be the focal point of one presidential election after another, unspoken probably. Or the openly spoken focal point of one Supreme Court nomination after another, it will not go away, it will not disappear. And actually, statistics show that people who advocate abortion are losing ground in America. More and more, young people are seeing that it's not going away because they believe that the pre-born is a human being and should be protectable under the laws of our country. And that we look forward someday to the day when Roe versus Wade will seem as bizarre and strange as the Dred Scott decision, which denied personhood to slaves, saying they weren't really human beings, they had no right to sue in a court of law. That was the settled law of the land. Have you heard that phrase before? The settled law of the land at that time, and it is no longer. Thanks be to God.

Now, the price was high: Blood-soaked battlefields in Virginia and Maryland, and Missouri and Georgia, Tennessee. That was a very high price. But the battle is being fought even today, and the reason it will not go away is that Harry Blackman's majority ruling is in direct contradiction to what the scripture says. Harry Blackman wrote at the time, a majority of ruling, he said this, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. We need not resolve that. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive in any consensus, the judiciary at this point in the development of man's knowledge is not in a position to speculate." Oh, they did more than speculate, they decided that the pre-born was not a person worthy of protection under the laws of our country. They did far more than speculate. And the problem is, and this is why it won't go away, is that that is in direct contradiction with the teaching of Scripture.

In Luke Chapter 1, for example, when Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist meets Mary, who is pregnant with Jesus, she says this, it says, “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed, "Blessed are you among women. And blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me. As soon as the sound of your greeting reach my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy." Oh, just meditate on those words: For joy. That declares the personhood of John the Baptist before he was born.

And so there is a war on... It is a war, people have spoken of culture wars, but I think this is probably the central issue and the central battleground. Some have likened it to the struggle at the time of the Civil War. But I think it's much larger than that. There is a spiritual warfare going on here. The Scripture openly testifies to it, I preached more directly to that issue last year. But in Ephesians 6:12, it says, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Oh, how important it is for us to remember that. To look past the human opponent who seems so filled with hate and with irrational arguments against Scripture, and to say, "You know, I believe that someday the grace of God can change your heart." Alright, my struggle is not with you, my struggle is with the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms that are stirring this system up, and how complex is that system?

Also says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we are ready to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ." That's speaking of a warfare, but it's a different kind of warfare than the kind we might see in the nightly news. Our weapons are truth, our weapons are the power of the Holy Spirit, those are our weapons. We demolish ideas, we're destroying demonic strongholds of concepts that are taking people captive.

Now, there have been many casualties in this war, certainly, of course, the babies themselves, 43 million of them. Forty-three million have died in this country since abortion was legalized. They are certainly casualties, the mothers themselves, casualties, physically, emotionally and spiritually damaged by this. The doctors and abortion providers and abortion advocates, radicals, folks like that are being damaged because their hearts are being hardened. It's harder for them to hear the truth of God in almost any area of their lives, they also are damaged.

But one of the casualties, a little harder to measure, I wanna focus on today. And that is the basic biblical concept, that children are a blessing from God, that children are a blessing from God. And it's ironic, isn't it? Because a Planned Parenthood slogan, “Every child a wanted child”. I thought about that. The origination of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, one of the most bizarre individuals I have ever studied. What a strange and weird person. She was one of the original advocates of birth control in our country and started the league of availability of birth control. It became Planned Parenthood. She espoused weird eugenic views, in which basically the survival of the fittest would weed out races and individuals unfit for life. And as much as Planned Parenthood wants to embrace her radical courage and all that, they are distancing themselves from some of the more racist aspects of her teaching. She was a eugenicist, very similar to the Nazis.

And out of this whole mentality comes this idea of every child a wanted child. The concept is that if we have widely available birth control and abortion, we can avoid having babies we don't wanna have. And then we can check our sin nature at the door and the children will grow up in a paradise in which there are no problem societies, these problems will be solved because all of the children will have been wanted in some sense at the moment of their birth. Parenting is far more difficult than that I'm finding. How I felt about the moment I first saw my child doesn't help me much along the way. I have to be renewed daily and a love for them and for the Lord, etcetera. But the idea is every child wanted a child would bring us into some kind of a paradise.

The implication is that tragedies like child abuse and cycles of poverty will be eliminated, if we could just have this widespread birth control and abortion being part of that. But the problem is it puts people in a position to decide if they wanted the child or not. The child then became a commodity to assess and to decide. And do you think that mentality stops at the moment of birth? It continues right on. And what's amazing is that child abuse actually greatly increased after Roe versus Wade. From 1976 to 1987, 330% increase in reported cases of child abuse. Now, I know some of that is probably because of different reporting approaches, but I think it's also... And studies have been shown that linked together, induced abortion and child abuse, it's a great tragedy. But the basic attack is the attack on the idea of the child as created in the image of God, a blessing from God, and that's great suffering.

And as a result, more and more couples in America are making the decision voluntarily to remain childless, choosing not to have any children at all, the fact is the nation's birth rate fell last year to a historic low of 66.9 births per thousand women ages 15 to 44. That represents a decline of 43% since 1960. So our birth rate going down, down, down, down. Other parts of the world, especially the Muslim parts of the world, birth rate going up, up, up, up. What does that say for the future of our world? It's gonna be very interesting. But our birth rates continue to decline, to decline. Couples are choosing...and not to have children.

There's a great emphasis in popular culture on how expensive it is, I mean financially expensive to raise children. Have you heard of any of these studies and statistics? For example, March 30th, 1998, US News and World Report had an article, the cost of raising children, and they came to the conclusion that it took $1.5 million to raise a child up to age 22. Well, let me tell you something, I can challenge a lot of that... We're not gonna make a 1.5 million and we have five children. Can you imagine $7.5 million, Christie, we need to come up with? I don't have it, friends. And don't pass the hat. I actually don't think it's necessary. I don't know where they come up with these statistics.

But think of the spirit behind the study. What a burden, our children. What a high cost it is to have them. How difficult it is to have children. There is right now a proliferation of anti-child movements, you can find it an interesting e-world that we live, the internet world, there are groups out there, for example, No Kidding is a group. Look it up. It's a group basically that espouses voluntary childlessness or happily child-free. They strongly argue on the basis of world overpopulation. This one is the most interesting to me: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Vehement. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is the human humanitarian alternative to human disasters. Quote. This is not me, this is a quote. It's important that you know this. "When every human being chooses to stop breeding Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die and evolve." If they believe in evolution. "And will perhaps pass away as so many of Mother Nature's experiments have done throughout the eons. Good health will be restored to the Earth's ecology, to the life form known by many as Gaia." That is just scary. Voluntary Human Extinction.

Now, the real danger here is that the attitude, attitudes like this can seep into the church and we can start embracing some of these attitudes. Dr. Muller president of Southern Seminary has been very proactive in writing about Christians and the issue of voluntary childless-ness. He talks about how couples don't want children to affect their lifestyle. Talk about one couple in the Atlanta area that enjoy riding on matching Harley Davidson motorcycles and love their gourmet kitchen outfitted with the very latest stainless steel appliances and trendy countertops. And the woman explained, "If we had kids, we would need a table where kids could do homework." Muller said clearly, “children aren't part of their interior design plan.” And so more and more, there's this theme of the cost, the burden, the difficulty of children. And Muller's concern is that some of the world's views on children are creeping into the church. “My larger concern is with the bare fact that an anti-natalist philosophy has now infected much of the Christian church. I fully expect non-Christians to think and act as unbelievers. Nevertheless, I am perplexed by Christians who seem to believe that marriage and reproduction can be separated by glorifying God within the marital bond." And so he said this, "Couples are not given the option of choosing childless-ness in the biblical revelation. To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God's gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are to find many of our deepest joys and satisfactions in the raising of children within the context of the family. Those who reject children want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship, without the responsibilities of parenthood. They rely on others to produce and sustain the generations to come."

Now, Dr. Muller is very careful, and I want to say as well, we are not dealing with the tragedy here of involuntary childlessness, sterility, the inability to have children. We're not talking about that, it's a great sadness and tragedy for some couples who just can't seem to have children, that's not what we're talking about. And neither do I or Dr. Muller believe that if you don't have children, you can't be a fruitful member of Christ's kingdom. We embrace the fact that there are some that remain unmarried for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. That they do not have the gift of marriage, they do have the gift of singleness, and they are free to serve the Lord boldly in that way, and it's a wonderful thing. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ Himself had no biological children. As far as we know, John the Baptist and Apostle Paul had no biological children. All of them fruitful for the kingdom, and yet it's said of Jesus that he has spoken of as having children spiritually. In Hebrews 2:13, it says, "Here am I and the children God has given me." Isn't that beautiful? So, it speaks of Christ's children in that sense.

And then even the Apostle Paul uses parenting language when he speaks of his ministry. He says in 1 Corinthians 4:15, "Even though you have 10,000 guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the gospel." And he speaks both to Timothy and Titus calling each of them in different places, "My true son in the faith." And so I'm not saying that you have to have children to be a fruitful member of Christ's kingdom.

But what we are talking about is couples that marry and in a kind of a trendy way say, "I think we're just deciding not to have children." That's a different matter. And I wonder if the root of it is that some of this attitude has seeped in that children are essentially a burden, something you assess and in the end, you decide that it's not worth it. Even Christian parents who have children and see them as a blessing have to fight off this attitude. We have to fight off the attitude of how difficult it is to raise the children. How many sacrifices we have to make and all that. It's not to be discussed.

And so I just wanna give you a gift this morning, the biblical perspective on children as an essential blessing from God. I'm doing it as an antidote to this pervasive cultural concept of children, isn't it something we assess and frankly, in many cases, reject. And I'm gonna do it from Psalm 1:27, and there it says, Verse 1 and 2, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go to bed late, eating the bread of anxious toil, for He gives to his beloved sleep."

Now, this is one of the Song of Ascents, Solomon wrote it and the Songs of Ascent were to be sung by pilgrims, the Jewish people who are traveling from different parts of the promised land, going up to Jerusalem one of the three times a year that men were commanded, Jewish men, to assemble in Jerusalem. There were three feasts: Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Booths, and those three times they were to come. And the implication is that they're gonna bring their families, and as they're going, they're gonna travel and they've got time on the road together. And we talked last two weeks about Deuteronomy 6, talk about these things when you walk along the road, and so the Songs of Ascents are psalms that were sung as they went. And it wouldn't be surprising for these Jewish men surrounded by their children, their families to be thinking about their heritage, to be thinking about their children, and frankly to be thinking about the nation as a whole. And so, this is the Song of Ascents.

And basically, the central message is that God must be in the middle of what you're doing. God must be central to everything you do or you will waste your time. That's a transferable principle, and not even connected just to children, but unless the Lord builds what it is you're building, you are wasting your time. God must be in the center of what you're doing, He must be leading you in what you're doing, or you're going to waste your time. The Christian version of this is in John 15:5, in which it says, Christ said, "I am the vine, and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he'll bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing." And Psalm 127, I think, teaches the same thing. Another way of saying, and a Christian poet put it this way, "Only when life will soon be passed, only what's done for Christ will last." There's a sense of the centrality of Christ and of God in the home. God must be central. Now, here it says, "Unless the Lord builds the house," I don't believe the word house here is primarily referring to a building project, like four walls and a roof, something like that. I really think it's talking about a family, a household, a heritage. Think about the time of the birth of Christ.

Luke 2:4, it says, "Then Joseph went up from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged," Listen, "To the house and lineage of David." And you remember somewhat of the play on words, when David wanted to build a house for the Lord, he said, "Here I am living in this nice Palace, and I would love to build a house for God, he's out there in a tent." Did he feel sorry for God? Was that it? I don't know, but he said, "I'm in a palace of cedar and he's in a tent, there's something amiss there." But then God spoke to David through Nathan the prophet, saying, "Are you the one to build a house for me? Rather, I'm gonna build a house for you." Now, what house did God build for David? He said, "I declare to you," 1st Chronicle 17, "I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you when your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons and I will establish his kingdom." So it's a lineage, a genealogy, descendants, that's the house. And unless the Lord builds that house, you labor in vain, you're wasting your time.

God must be at the center of your household. Now friends, what house is God building now? Is he not building a spiritual house? Does it not speak of the house of Jesus Christ, the Temple of God, where He will dwell forever and ever. 1 Peter 2:4&5, it says, "As you come to Him, the living stone rejected by men, but chosen by God and precious to Him, speaking of Jesus Christ, you also like living stones are being built together to be a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God." So we're like living stones into this new house that God's building. That's the house he's building. These living stones were once babies in someone's family, they were ones babies, they were raised up, maybe raised in a believing home. And shaped and prepared to go into the wall of the eternal temple that God is building, and if the Lord is building that house, we need to be involved, don't you think? That is the house he's building, it's the house of Jesus Christ, of which it is spoken in Revelation 21, "Then I looked and I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.” And then it was said, “Now is the dwelling of God with men, and He will live with them and he will be their God and dwell with them forever." That is the house that God is building. And unless the Lord builds your house, you're not involved in what God is doing.

Well, in the center of Psalm 127 is this concept that children are a heritage and a reward from the Lord. Children are a blessing, and it begins in some of the translations, the NIV has the bad habit of cutting off the beholds, I like behold, even though it's an awkward kind of thing. When was the last time you just said behold to somebody, try it this week to a friend or whatever, roommate, co-worker, "Behold, I'm about to tell you something." See what happens. Well, I think the NIV trying to make it more modern, we really don't say that anymore, so sometimes they go look and sometimes they just drop it out, But behold, children are such and such in a way, sit up and take notice. I'm gonna tell you something you might not believe. So even back then, perhaps there was a challenge of thinking of children as a blessing, but it says, behold, and then it uses these two wonderful words, children are a heritage.

Children are a reward. The word “heritage” is almost... Sometimes the word translated inheritance, they're like an inheritance, something you could... An heirloom or something you could pass on from generation and generation, a sense of immense worth and value. The second word is “reward”, a sense of, again, something incredibly valuable given to somebody who's rendered good service to a king maybe, for a reward for a righteous life. God may reward you with children. And there are some brief advantages, are listed, it says in 127, that they are like arrows, verse 4, like arrows in the hands of a warrior. And it speaks, "Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." So I started thinking about archery stories, I love archery stories, ever read the tales of Robin Hood, you know how he went after the silver arrow with the Golden feathers and all that, and all the best archers from the North of England came to shoot for the silver arrow, and that's a great story. You'll have to read it to find out how it comes out. Robin Hood wins. But anyway, he just... The marksmanship, it's just incredible from 100 paces what he's able to do.

Archery and bows and arrows have had a major impact in many battles, like in the middle ages, for example, the Battle of Agincourt 1415, in which the British longbow dominated the day, though the British were outnumbered 10 to one, many of their soldiers suffering from dysentery, and the French, heavy knights in armor and all that, they were really looking at getting slaughtered, and Shakespeare picks up on this, and Henry the 5th, and there's this famous speech in which he rallies the troops and says, "We few we happy band of brothers that were here this day, etcetera," well, they end up winning the battle, apparently historically, they've been shooting the bow the wrong way, they've been holding it horizontally and pulling from the hip, reduce its range greatly. He said, "No, turn it vertically point it up at about 45 degree angles and see what you can do." They could fire and hit accurately target 400 yards away, they could fire nine arrows a minute. They wiped the French soldiers out before they even got close, the battle wasn't that simple, but here's the principle, how are children like arrows? It's a matter of projected influence.

A sword-bearer, he can only project his influence as far as his arm can go, and he's gonna fight hand-to hand with the sword, that's fine, very powerful, very influential, but here's a set of godly parents.  Let's talk about it that way. Who can project their influence for generations to come, 400 yards across the battlefield, projecting influence, great influence, enough to win the battle? That's what children are like. The ability to project influence. And the psalmist celebrates having a multiplicity of children, notice it says the children of your youth. Let me tell you something, alright? There is a reason God gives infants to young people, there is. And if you wanna know more about that, come and talk to me afterwards, but there is a reason why. Or talk to Christy about it. But for the most part, God blesses young people with children, infants, but Abraham and Sarah were quite aged, and God gave them a sustaining grace, didn't he? And Elizabeth and Zechariah the same thing, he gave them sustaining grace. It's a beautiful thing.

Now, friends, Psalm 127 doesn't stand alone in scripture as uniting the idea of blessing and children. It's a consistent teaching in the Bible from the very beginning. Genesis 1, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created him male and female, He created them." Listen, "And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the Earth." Right from the very, God blessed them, be fruitful and multiply. Do you see the connection? And again, when the human race was dangling by a thread, eight people, Noah and his sons and their wives, eight people. After that, same thing happens again. Genesis 9:1, God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number," the blessing and be fruitful, there it is.

Or concerning Abraham and his son Ishmael, God said to Abraham concerning Ishmael, he said this, “As for Ishmael,” this is Genesis 17:20, “I have heard you, I will surely bless him, I will make him fruitful and greatly increases numbers, he will be the father of 12 rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.” The blessing of God with the multiplication of children. Again, Isaac, Genesis 26:24, “That night, the Lord appeared to him, and said, "I am the God of your father, Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham," Blessing and increase the number of your descendants. It's God's way of thinking. And again, Israel as they're about to enter the promised land. In Deuteronomy 7:12-14, "If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord, your God will keep His covenant of love with you as he swore to your forefathers, he will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless you and increase your numbers, he will bless the fruit of your womb."

What does that mean? Fruit of the womb, you have to study these words very carefully, it means your children, he's gonna bless your children, your babies, He's gonna bless them, and your grain in new wine and oil, it says in Deuteronomy 7. Now verse 14 it says, "You'll be blessed more than any other people, none of your men are women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young." And again and again, the issue of the barren wife comes up and God blesses the barren wife with children. Sarah, for example, "As for Sarah, your wife,” Genesis 17, “...you will no longer call her Sarai, her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of Nations, kings of peoples will come from her.

Rebecca was barren. And it says, Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was barren, and the Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebecca became pregnant. If you are among that group of people that is suffering because it doesn't seem that God is blessing you or hasn't blessed you with children yet, pray, pray as Isaac did and see if God opens the womb, as he did for Rebecca, and how great would your joy be? The same thing happened with Rachel. As a matter of fact, she was so upset and angry that she wasn't having children, she was greatly jealous of her sister Leah, and she went to her husband, grabbing him and saying, "Give me children or I'll die," and that's a tough request to fulfill. I know every husband wants to please his wife, but he says, "Am I in the place of God? I don't have that kind of power." But in the end, God answered her prayer and her desires. It says in Genesis 30, "Then God remembered Rachel and he listened to her and opened her womb, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son."

The same thing happened with Hannah, the same thing happened with Elizabeth again and again. And the principle is clear. Psalm 113:9, “He settles the barren woman in her home as the happy mother of children, praise the Lord.” Friends, do you not see the biblical weight of evidence, how overwhelming it is that children are a blessing. They're a blessing from God. Now, where does this mentality come from in our country, but from the pit of hell? It does not come from God, it isn't coming from God, it's coming from Satan, who as Randy Alcorn, said, “...desires to hang God an effigy.” That's a powerful image. We are in the image of God. He can't get at God who dwells above, so he hangs God an effigy by attacking his image here in this world.

Now, how are children a blessing from God? I listed out 10 ways, and I just went quickly through them, and if you don't like my 10, come up with 10 of your own or 20, but these are just 10 ways that I've found that scripturally and just an experience that children are a blessing from God. First of all, they are a display of the glory of God, as we've already said, every child created in the image of God, they are in the image of God from creation, and as they developed from that point, they display more and more of the image of God. Human beings are the greatest and the most complex of all of God's creations in this world.

Michael Card in “Beautiful Lullaby” had this quote, singing to one of his infants, "You show more of God than I'll ever teach you." Isn't that powerful? They just show God, they are displays of the glory of God. Secondly, as we've been saying, we don't need to belabor this, but Deuteronomy 6, having children is the most effective disciple-making opportunity you'll ever have in your life. The connections are stronger, they get to observe you, they get to watch your lifestyle, and there is a need for pattern in evangelism and discipleship. Philippians 3:17, "Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you." Nowhere is it easier than in the Christian home for one person or a group of people to set a pattern for others to follow, than in the home, it's the most effective disciple-making opportunity that you'll ever have. Thirdly, it is an opportunity for you, I'm talking parents, to grow up spiritually. And you say, "Well, wait a minute, we're the parents, we're the mature ones."

Oh really? There are opportunities to grow. We're not done being saved, we are not done being sanctified, and most parents can testify immediately to how their children are one of the number one arenas of personal spiritual growth for themselves, they grow in Christ as they learn to trust in Christ for situations. They learn the Bible much better than they ever did, 'cause they have to explain it to children who keep saying why, why, why? And you just bore down to the core of the issue again and again, because God said so, that's why. Well, why did he say so? And it's convicting that your children pick up your sin patterns far more easily than they pick up your good habits, and so opportunity for spiritual growth.

Fourthly, constant occasions for prayer. Constant occasions for prayer. Paul talks about a great trial that he was in. In 2 Corinthians 1, he said, "This happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead." Self-reliance is a great scourge in the Christian life, friends, how many times do children bring you to a point where you cannot rely on yourselves? Barrenness would be one example where you just know it's beyond just like Jacob said to Rachel, "Am I in the place of God? I don't have the power to do this." Well, I feel that again and again concerning transformation of my children's hearts, I have not that power, and so therefore is a great opportunity for prayer, others have faced dread illnesses, leukemia and other things, and they are brought to the edge of hopelessness, and they look inward and do not find the resources there.

What does it do? It drives into prayer. Opportunities for prayer. It destroys self-reliance. It also fifth, destroys self-centeredness, how can you be self-centered during those midnight feedings or when they're toddlers, 3:00 in the morning and they've had the flu and they need a change of sheets, or how can you be self-centered when you come home tired and there are just issue after issue to deal with, you learn not to be self-centered or just even turning around the issue of just generosity, the yearning to just bless your children and give them many good things, it's an antidote to self-centeredness.

Sixth, it's an object lesson on God's love for us, many people have testified they didn't really understand how much God loved them until they had their own children, they were on some kind of a performance thing, they thought they're in, they're out. They're in, they're out, they're up they're down like the stock market, but then they realized when they had children, that's not the way it is with children, they have their good days and bad days, they have their sins and their disobedience, and then there are times they just melt your heart, but they're always your child, they're always your son or daughter, there's a security there, and God has chosen to use that language, we are adopted children of God. Ain't that beautiful? And so, we can learn that God loves us, Jesus even uses, "If you then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him?" An object lesson of God's love for us.

Seventh, the source of joy and happiness, they just do fun, wonderful, joy producing things that you'll never forget, they do funny things, they do amazing things, they make you things that you keep the rest of your life up in your bulletin board. They just are a source a river of happiness every time little children walk in the room, almost everybody just smiles, because they just bring happiness, they bring joy. Why would you not want that blessing, it's just an amazing thing, what the devil comes to try to steal from us. "The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly," Jesus said, A source of joy and happiness. You see that at weddings when parents just can't stop crying, and I'm not convinced they're just tears of joy. I'm not convinced. I think they're tears of sadness at the end of a phase of life that has been delightful and know that from then on it really won't be the same, but yes, they're tears of joy because they know this is God's way and it must continue that way.

Eighth, deep friendship, Christian parents can take joy in the fact they're building a bond of relationship that will last unlike any in this world, deep friendship.

Ninth, a lasting personal legacy, multi-generational view, 400 yards down the battlefield, you're projecting your influence for generations to come, you can have an influence, you're not gonna waste your life, you're gonna invest your life in children, you're gonna invest in the pattern of discipleship. Grandparents testify that there are few things as joy-producing as looking at the exploits of talking about the exploits of their grandkids. It's interesting on the other end, listening to the stories about all the things their grand kids are doing, but that's fine, the church has a ministry to listen to the stories of grandparents. "Oh, look at the pictures," but there's a great joy that comes from the multi-generational view.

And then finally, blessings in old age. It's more than just biblical Social Security. The Bible's version of how elderly people are cared for in their old age is children. The children, the families provide for them, they care for them, but it's more than just financial, it's relational, it's being delivered from the scourge of loneliness in your old age.

That's 10. You probably could come up with 10 others of ways that children are a blessing. What do we do? How do we apply this? Can I go back to 2 Corinthians 10, and urge you to, “...take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ”? It's like there's a big battle going on and someone... It's like nighttime and something goes running by and it looks like an enemy, so you grab it by the back of the neck and bring it to the Commander and say, Is this friend or foe? That's the way thoughts are, take the thought captive to Jesus and say is it friend or foe? Is the concept that children are essentially a burden and difficult and expensive, is it from Christ or not? The Bible says no, take it then back to Christ and think about things Christianly. I wanna finish by just saying a word of grace concerning this issue of abortion, and I've just learned to do this and it's so important, a few issues make people hurt and feel pain and guilt and grief as much as this one, and so we... Even an essentially joyful topic like how children are a blessing can turn around and become a great source of grief and pain, all I can do is point you to the only source of forgiveness and mercy and grace there is in this world, the cross of Jesus Christ.

Come again to the cross, find forgiveness, find grace and mercy to help you in your time of need, and it's not just perhaps women who've had abortions, or it may be men who forced women in that direction, or just all of us feeling that we haven't done enough to be salt and light, haven't prayed enough, whatever, but we can feel so guilty. I'd urge you to come back to the cross. Deal honestly with what the Bible calls sin. Don't call it that it wasn't sin. But just bring it to the cross and let Jesus Christ cover it with His grace and with His blood. Close with me in prayer.

As I look at my life, I can say easily, the greatest gift that I have ever received, the gift of greatest value that I have is eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. The fact that my soul is pure in the sight of God, despite the fact that I sin daily, I'm standing under a shower of grace. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me from every sin, and someday I will take my place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. That's the greatest gift that's ever been given me. The greatest ministry that has ever been given me is a family, a Christian wife and five children. They are on my mind everyday, they're on my mind every hour, they have been entrusted to my care. And the second greatest joy I could have would be to see each one of those six people with me at their places in the feast, in the kingdom of heaven. And toward that end, I labor daily. To that end, I teach and I preach Christ, and I shepherd my family imperfectly, but that is my yearning and my desire.

Sometime ago, as I was looking at the Scripture that said, “What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”, it gave me a sense of the value of that first gift I was just mentioning, the value of my soul. And that Jesus shed his blood for my soul is the greatest gift, and if you're a Christian, the same is true of you. You can't have a greater gift than that, Jesus said so. But as I was meditating on that and I'm thinking about my ministry here as pastor and I'm thinking about my life, it came to my conclusion, What would it profit a pastor to have the most fruitful ministry, a church that's flourishing and growing in many ways, and lose his family? What would the advantage and the benefit be for that? And so it has come pressing into me, and especially more as my children grow and as time goes so quickly, how vital it is that I preach Christ and exemplify Christ, and I evangelize my children and disciple them everyday? And that's what I wanna help you do today, that's what we were seeking to do last week in Deuteronomy 6. This is the second week of looking at this, and the focus of these two weeks has been saturating the minds and hearts of your children with the Word of God. The text is Deuteronomy 6.

Now, last week, I shared a disturbing statistic with you from T. C.  Pinkney that 70% of youth involved in youth groups at evangelical churches, 70%, within two years of graduating high school do not attend church. Josh McDowell supplemented that, saying that less than one-third of today's youth even attend church at all. If you put the two together and just do some estimation, you might think that less than 10% of just youth in general will be attending church once they're done with high school and on. And that is very troubling. I shared with you also how my friend, Scott Brown, said the central reason for that within the church is that the church, and specifically Christian parents, and even more specifically Christian fathers, have turned away from the biblically-ordained patterns and roles of youth ministry and just ministry of the family in general. That fathers are satisfied with just bringing their children to church and having a good youth minister and a good youth ministry to evangelize and disciple their own children, and we find this to be greatly inadequate, Andy Winn and I, as we've talked about it.

And so, it was our desire here at the beginning of 2006, to lay a challenge before the families, to the parents especially, and especially the fathers, to lead their families in godliness in ways they never have before, to evangelize and disciple your own children with the Word of God, and I wanna start there because I believe that the Word of God, a saturation with the Word of God primes the pump for everything else. It's understanding God from his Word, understanding his commandments, understanding what he expects from us. It is that that starts everything, all the rest flows from that, and so I have called on us to evangelize and disciple our children in new and more powerful ways. I hope it's been a good week for you, if you have children growing at home and you've seen some changes. I already have some encouraging stories from some folks that are stepping out in new directions in terms of family devotions. I wanted you to have a multigenerational view of spiritual prosperity and protection. We talked about that so that you, your children, their children, after there's a multigenerational vision. I came across a great testimony concerning Jonathan Edwards, who saturated his household with the Word of God and with his helpmeet, his wife, Sarah, they saturated their children with Christ. She was an incredible woman.

But among their descendants, their direct descendants, were 13 college presidents. Now stop and think about that. Thirteen presidents of colleges or universities, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, 100 missionaries. Wouldn't you love to have 100 missionaries among your descendants? Thirty judges, 60 physicians, 60 authors, 80 holders of public office, including three US senators, among Jonathan Edwards' descendants, three are senators, three governors, a vice president, a controller of the US Treasury, and many business owners and directors. And all of this flowing from the saturation of the Word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit in that household. Don't you yearn for a spiritual legacy that will last through eternity? These things are just earthly offices, but how much more significant is the fruit, the spiritual fruit in their lives that cannot really be measured until judgment day? Parental teaching and example have an incalculable influence on the lives of children, on succeeding generations. Children of divorce often get divorced themselves, children of alcoholics frequently succumb to temptation in that same area, and children of godly parents develop godly habits that can last a lifetime.

All of this is in Deuteronomy 5:9-10, there the Lord said, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” That's incredible. And therefore, I thought Deuteronomy 6 is the best place to begin to talk about that, and the centerpiece of all of it, in verse 4 and 5 is loving God with all you are. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” That's the centerpiece of it all. And frankly, that's the goal. That's where you're heading as you evangelize and disciple your children. “The goal of our instruction,” says Paul, “is love from a pure heart and a good conscience,” that they would love God, not just that they would outwardly conform legalistically, like some Pharisees, to some religious lifestyle, but that they would love God from their hearts. That's the goal. That's the desire.

Now, therefore, we said, parents, these commandments that God gives us first must be upon your hearts. You must saturate your own heart in the Word of God. I don't really think you can lead your family spiritually, family devotions and all that, if you're not having a daily quiet time. Your children need to see you daily meeting with the Lord, getting up in the morning, opening the Bible, just for yourselves. Praying for them and for yourself and for whatever is going on in your life, having a daily quiet time, that's the foundation. And finally, by way of review, I talked about fathers and I urged you to lead. I said that the Hebrew here focuses specifically on sons, not because God doesn't care about mothers or daughters, not at all, and we talked about that how in the overall teaching in the Scripture, it is very clear that fathers and mothers are to teach sons and daughters. But for some reason, God saw fit to say so that you, your son, and their sons after them, etcetera, and the reason I think is that God was establishing and upholding that pattern from the very creation of fathers leading their families spiritually. And so as you're training your sons, say, "Son, someday you're going to lead your own family, get ready. Get ready for that." And so I especially laid the burden and the challenge before fathers to lead their families. All right, that's all review. That's what we talked about last time.

Now, what I'd like to do is to give some practical advice right from Deuteronomy 6 on how to do it. Many of you have asked questions, "I don't know how to have a family devotion time, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to answer all the questions, and what practical advice do Scripture give us toward this?" And I wanna draw some things right out of Deuteronomy 6 that I think will help you and then just make some more practical hints along the way. The first thing is that we are to teach by talking about the Word of God. There just needs to be talk about Scripture. God has given to humanity the gift of speech. We are able to put abstract and even physical concepts into words so that as we're sitting in a room, we can't imagine and think about snowcapped mountains, or deep blue oceans, or a spiritual being called God. We can talk about these things in words.

And so it says in verse 6, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” And then it says in verse 7, “Impress them on your children, talk about them. Talk about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” You've got to talk to your children about the Word of God. You're to unpack the words of Scripture to your children. You're to look carefully at each section of Scripture. You're to impress the very words of Scripture into their minds and hearts. Now, we have a lot of things that people have come up with, a lot of publishers, a lot of AV folks, media that are doing things all the time, doing video DVDs, all kinds of fancy things that didn't exist a number of years ago. All of that may be helpful and valuable, but nothing takes the place of simply talking to your children about the Scripture. Talk to them about the words. What are the nouns and verbs, and adjectives? What does this paragraph mean? What is the book saying? What is the book of Galatians saying? What is the book of 1 Kings saying? Let's talk about Scripture. Talk about these things.

Now, I know that there are things called learning styles, visual learners learn best by seeing we're told, auditory learners learn best by hearing, tactile learners learn best by touching. Well, I think that God knew all that and then he created an incredible creation surrounding us by sights and sounds and smells, gave us five senses, and that kind of thing is gonna go on all the time. But for some reason, he has elevated the concept of hearing. He said in Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.” And so we are to talk about God's Word because concepts come in through the ears. And so, therefore, talk about the commandments of God. Start with the Ten Commandments. I have to confess to you today, I was a missionary on the field in Japan before I could recite the Ten Commandments. I knew where to find them, and if anyone ever asked me, I said, "Just a minute," and I'd open up the Bible and be able to tell them where the Ten Commandments were. But it wasn't until I was going through a little catechism with my children and memorized a simple list of the... Not all of the verses, but basically each concept that I had it memorized. And frankly, since that time, I've used it again and again in evangelism, the Ten Commandments.

I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make any idols. You shall not worship any idols. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh, for God made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the Sabbath. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. These are the commandments of God. Now, as you talk to your children about these commandments, they're getting not only the message of these commandments, but a greater message that there is a King of kings, there is a God who sits on a throne and has a right to talk to us like that. He has the right to command us what to do and what not to do. And that is vital. It's foundational. And at some point along the way, they're gonna start saying, especially when you come in and take Jesus's commentary on the Ten Commandments from the Sermon on the Mount, it's not enough not to murder, you have to not be angry with your brother or sister, oh, boy, that's tough. I didn't murder him. No, but you got angry. And Jesus said, anger is the root of murder. Let's talk about that.

Little by little, you know what's gonna happen? Then they say, "I need a savior, I can't live up to the Ten Commandments." What does it mean, you shall not covet? It means don't yearn for, don't want for something that's not given to you. Do little children do that? Oh, yes, they do. They have little covetous hearts. We have big covetous hearts. And they need to be brought to the commandments, and little by little what's gonna happen is they're gonna say, "I can't do this, daddy." And you're gonna say, "Yes, but Jesus did it for you. He came to be your righteousness. But the law, these commandments are to be upon your hearts," and you're to talk about them. Talk also about the Scripture in the New Testament. We have so much more than the Jews in the days of Deuteronomy had. So much more. They just have the law of Moses up to that point, perhaps the first four books of the Bible and the fifth was Deuteronomy, which was going on at that moment. That's all they had. We have everything else. Look at the riches. We have the Sermon on the Mount, we have the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”

Give them the Word of God, saturate them with the words of Christ. Saturate them also with the gospel of Christ, with what Jesus accomplished at the cross, with the things he said he was coming to do. John 5:24, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my Word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He's crossed over from death to life.” Make it come alive for your children. What does it mean to cross over? Maybe when you're going across a river. Recently, we crossed the Mississippi River, they were crossing over the river. That might be a good time to talk about John 5:24. You've gone from one side to the other, from death to life. How do I do that? By believing in Jesus, hearing his Word and believing in him who sent Christ. So saturate them with the words of Christ, talk about them, fill in other words of Scripture, like Hebrews 12:29 says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” Maybe you're camping, you're watching a fire and you're saying, "Why do you think God wants us to think, at least in part in one way, that he's a consuming fire? Why does he want that idea in our minds?" And get them to talk about it. What is there about God that's like a consuming fire? Just saturate them. Talk with them.

Or this one, 1 Corinthians 15:20, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” That's talking about resurrection. Now, he's not gonna be the only one raised, He has a resurrection body. Someday, we will have resurrection bodies, too, if we believe in Christ. You're just talking about the Scriptures, word by word.

Secondly, we teach by constant repetition. First we teach by talking, just talk about the words. Secondly, we teach by constant repetition. Look at verse 7, it says, Impress them upon your children, that's the NIV. Other translations give us, “Teach them diligently to your children.” That's clearly what it's getting at, but the Hebrew word behind it is literally, “sharpen.” Sharpen them into your children, sharpen. In the Bible, the word is used for swords. Swords can be sharpened, same word. Arrowheads can be sharpened. It just has to do with taking, let's say, a wet stone and taking the edge of the sword and just rubbing it along the wet stone in a certain pattern with some oil and all that, and little by little, the edge is honed to a razor edge. It’s ready for use.

Why did the author, why did God, why did Moses use this idea of the word, sharpen? Sharpen these commandments into your children. I just think it has to do with teaching by repetition. Constant repetition. There's the old joke about the husband saying to the wife, "I told you the day we got married that I loved you, and if anything changes, I'll let you know." That does not work. Does it, men? It does not work. Well, neither does it work to say, "I am about to tell you the Ten Commandments. You're gonna hear it once from me and that's it. I'll let you know if they're ever repealed. As long as I've been alive they've never been repealed. They're still good. So here you go, you're ready? This is your one and only time hearing it from daddy, and then off you go." Is that enough? No, we've got to constantly sharpen them into our children, bring it alive. Repetition. The image I get here is of an engraver, the photo on the cover of your bulletin is of a metal engraver, and nowadays, we have machines that do all of these things. It used to be done by skilled craftsmen who knew what they were doing, but now we just have these machines that do them.

But think about how it was back in Moses's day. In Exodus 28:36, he commands the artisan, he said, Make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it the words, “Holy to the Lord.” Well, what the artisan would have to do is take a stylus and just begin the engraving. He'd take the letters and just start to write the letters that made up the words, “Holy to the Lord.” And one mark across the gold plate was not enough, there had to be kind of like a digging of a trough into the metal plate. Repetition. The stylus has to be harder than the soft metal you're engraving or else the stylus is gonna smush and not the plate. Nothing is more unyielding than the Word of God. It has not changed in thousands of years, 3500 on this book, 2000 years on the New Testament, has not changed and it won't. As a matter of fact, heaven and earth will pass away, but Christ's words will never pass away. Not the smallest letter or least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything's fulfilled. It's not going anywhere. It is a stylus that can write on their hearts, it's not changing, and so therefore you take that stylus of the Word of God and you impress the letters holy to the Lord into their hearts. They are holy to the Lord, they are his. But not just once, again and again, you constantly repeat these things.

I think the words can also use...it basically has to do with opening, it can refer to kind of a piercing motion, and so the Word of God has meant sometimes to pierce their hard hearts. We all have some hardness in our hearts, and sometimes it's gotta do with an opening or a piercing. I like the image that Lou Priolo gives in the book, Teach them Diligently. It's a very good book, and there's a number of them out at the book table out there. I would urge you to take a few extra minutes at the end of worship and go and look. There's a number of great resources over there. Talk to you more about them in a minute, but Lou Priolo's book is there, we bought 20 of them. They're on sale for $10, and just pick one up. He takes Deuteronomy 6 and just unfolds it in a very practical way and helps you to know how to teach the Word of God diligently to your children. But this is what he says. He says, "I sometimes liken the heart of my child to a smooth, non-porous surface, such as a table top. My goal as a teacher is to have the child absorb as much of what I'm teaching as possible. If I were to pour the water of the Word on to that smooth surface, most of it would run off. But if I drilled hundreds of tiny holes in that surface so that by the time I finished drilling, it would be as porous as a sponge, then the water would be thoroughly absorbed into the table.”

Teaching, in the flow of life, by showing how these Scriptures relate to the issues of actual life circumstances is tantamount to drilling those tiny holes. It makes it easier for your child to absorb the Word of God." So, what you want is you wanna take the Word of God and just bore it into their hearts so that they're open up and they're absorbing it, they're pulling it in. Now, he says, you do that by teaching in the midst of life situations, we'll get to that in a minute, but right now, what I wanna say is that the Word of God is meant to open up the hard human heart, and it alone has the power to do that. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2.” The Word of God alone has transformational power in the life, the heart of your child.

I remember one time thinking about the difference between a rock that I found, I was in the woods of New Hampshire, and a rock that I found in the woods compared to a rock that I found out of the river. The rock out there in New Hampshire, the Granite State, the rock was probably granite, it had all these jagged kind of crystalline edges, very sharp, covered with dirt 'cause I got it off the forest floor. I went over to the river and I swished it in the cold, clear mountain stream, just swished it until all the dirt was gone, and then I got, reached down into the cold water and I pulled out and got a river rock of about the same size. Both of them are clean of dirt, but there was a big difference between the two, one of them was very jagged to the touch, the other one very smooth to the touch. Now, my question to you is, How do you transform a forest rock into a river rock? What's the answer? You put it in the river. There you go, it's that simple. Just put it in the river, right? Go eat lunch and come back and out it comes, it is a full-blown river rock, right? No, it's just a wet forest rock, maybe completely clean now, but just wet, okay?

And so it is in the Christian life.  There are sins and dirty patterns and all that immediately get cleaned up for people that come to Christ later in life, but that doesn't mean they're in every way conformed. Well, frankly, the same is true of children as well, they are descendants of Adam and they have their own sins to work through, and it's only the constant and gentle kind of flow of the sand over the jagged edges of the rock that over 100 years transforms that rock into a smooth river rock. It takes a long time. It's a picture of saturation, it's a picture of immersion into the Word of God and a stream of Scripture flowing through their little minds all the time. It transforms them, it will transform them into disciples of Jesus Christ.

The third practical lesson from Deuteronomy 6 is teaching everyday life as situations. It says, “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up.” God's desire is that you take the every day mundane things of this world and make them come alive, connected to Scripture. Actually turn it around and, say, make it obvious to your children that Scripture speaks to every area of life. There is nothing in your life that Scripture does not address.

It's your job as a teacher of your children to show that to them, that a simple command of Scripture then applies to this and that and the other situation. Lou Priolo takes this example of Philippians 2:14, “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” Okay? So you've got a handful of kids, you may need that verse, you just might need that verse, okay? No, you will need that verse and you need it for yourself as well, but it says, “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” What Lou Priolo says is that, apply it to real situations in everyday life. For example, you may not argue or complain when you don't like your breakfast. You may not argue or complain when you have to stop playing and clean up your room. You may not argue or complain when you are told to go to bed. You may not argue or complain when you're told to do your homework. You may not argue or complain when your brother or sister takes the last cookie off the plate. In general, you may not argue or complain in any life situation that conflicts wherein which your will conflicts with the will of the Lord. Everyday life situations. And it also says, teach them in every situation. Basically, every situation is a time to weave Scripture in, while driving in the car, we spend a lot of time driving in the car.

And as I'd mentioned before a number of times on Sunday morning, when we drive to church on Sunday morning, we read a psalm. We've been doing this for years, one psalm a week. We're at Psalm 118. Now, my kids told me last week that Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the Bible, we had no problem knocking off Psalm 117 in our 25-minute commute. No problem. It's two verses. Alright? So we talked about it, etcetera. This one this morning is more average, it's 29 verses. In verse 22, for example, it said, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this and is marvelous in our eyes.” So we had a chance to talk about Christ and how He is the stone the builders rejected. We talked about later in Psalm 118, how it says, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” and we said that some day the Jews will say that, and Jesus said they wouldn't see him again until they said, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Psalm 118. Next week, I don't know what we're gonna do.

Because 117, I was told, is the shortest chapter in the Bible, and 119 is the longest, 176 verses. We're gonna have to talk really quickly, we have to get through it really fast, just to read it. No, we're not. We're just gonna go until the time's up when we're here at church and that's it, and then we'll just keep going. But Psalm 119 is so beautiful, about the weaving together of Scripture and prayer, and it's an incredible thing, we're gonna have a great time. But make the most of your drive times with your kids, make the most of them. Or while shopping, food shopping. I was amazed, blown away when I came back from my first mission trip in Kenya, and we had plenty of food there, the Kenyans were very gracious to us, it was an incredible time, but it's a simpler life, especially eating. It's just a simpler life. I got back to a supermarket in America and I saw something like 60 different kinds of bread. I'd never seen them before, though they'd been there. But now that I was overseas, I came back, I said, “This is unbelievable.” We have been lavished upon by God.

Deuteronomy 8 then speaks of warning, “Be careful when you enter the Promised Land, and when you eat from harvest and vineyards you didn't plant and you live in houses you didn't build. Be careful that your heart doesn't become proud and you forget the Lord your God.” Is that not a teachable moment? Stand there in front of the bread and say, “Look at all this. Do we need 60 different kinds of bread?” All right, but God's given them and they all have different flavors and different things and different prices and all that. God's given it to us, we shouldn't despise it, but understand there's a danger that our hearts may become proud and we'll forget God. It's a teachable moment. Or while cooking dinner, you can just remind them that the Lord provides food for every living creature. Psalm 104 says, “He opens up his hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing.” And so this food was given to mommy to make. She's making the dinner and she is turning it into something delicious and wonderful, but it was God that provided the food. Or even remind them of the time that Jesus, after his resurrection, cooked breakfast for his disciples, and how God the Father is planning to spread a wedding banquet for his Son.

I don't know that God's gonna do the actual cooking. I actually don't know that we're even gonna eat. I imagine we are, I don't know. Jesus ate after his resurrection, but just every moment is a chance to bring in Scripture. I told this one to Eric, he thought it was a little hokey, but I'm gonna go ahead and share it. While folding laundry, remind them of the time that Jesus took off the cloth off his head in the tomb and folded it up as an evidence of his own resurrection. With his own hands, he folded up the grave cloth that was around his head. Everything is a teachable moment. Everything. While tucking them into bed, say, “Remember the time that Jacob went to sleep with his head on a rock, sort of a soft pillow like you have? And God filled his mind with unextinguishable light, a vision of the glory of God and of heaven, and of a staircase going up to heaven and angels ascending and descending.” And then say, "Jesus said in John 1, He is the staircase. They're ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Good night. Have a good sleep."

Every moment, a teachable moment with the Word of God. A couple days ago, I was laying on a hammock with Carolyn, two of us laying side by side, and I was reading a book to her and then she was reading to me and we had a wonderful time. And then we just lay and we looked up at the trees as they're going up to the... I mean, they're just so tall, and I just wondered, how do they get that tall and how do they know when to stop, and all that. It's just an amazing thing. They just go up and up. We started talking about God's good gifts, and I said, "Well, let's play a game. Let's think of all the Bible verses we can in which it says that God's given us something, like the word gift or gave or given, something like that." We start out with John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." And Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

Or what Jesus said to the woman at the well, Samaritan woman, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is who speaks to you, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." It's in there a couple of times. Jesus is the gift of God, but he's also going to give living water. And concerning that, in Acts 1, in verse 4, now Jesus said, “Wait in Jerusalem for the gift my father promised to you. For John baptized with water, but in a few days, you'll receive [or you'll be baptized with] the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is a gift. And then the Spirit himself gives gifts, spiritual gifts. If your gift is serving, you should serve. If it's teaching... We just went on like this for a long time. Gift, gift, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly shadows. That doesn't change like shifting shadows. He is giving us gifts one after the other, and when we got done, we had an incredible sense of gratitude to God for all these gifts and a deeper sense of how much the Scripture has to say that we really didn't think that it had to say until we put it together. Saturate the Word of God into everyday life.

Now, I believe there's two kinds of learning that God brings us through, there's book learning and there's life learning, and I believe that the two of them are indispensable for our discipleship, evangelism and discipleship. They go together. The book learning is right here in this book, the Bible. It speaks truth, it speaks words to us. Life learning is around us, it's in physical creation and it's in the flow of history, world history and your history. God speaks to us and teaches us by both book learning and life learning. John Calvin called physical creation “the theater of God's glory.” Isn't that beautiful? So we're sitting in the theater looking at God's glory all the time, and so also is the flow of history, even their own history, things that happen to them at school. They're not accidental. Things have come to teach them the Word of God. Now, the two of them go together. You can't just have book learning, you can't just have the life learning. Book learning alone apart from life would mean literally nothing, they wouldn't understand. The Bible says, “Be completely humble and gentle.” “Be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

Okay, if they haven't seen anything like that ever lived in front of them, they will not know what that verse means. They have to see you being patient. They have to see you being humble. They have to see you covering over each other's sins or being gracious. That's life learning. But book learning takes priority, ultimately because it interprets the lives that we live. Now Lou Priolo cites the example of Helen Keller, who from infancy was blind, deaf, and mute. And Helen Keller, in later years, talked about how she came to understand words. Words. Now, she had an incredible teacher named Anne Sullivan, and they had already taught her the alphabet by writing letters on her hand, but they didn't mean anything to her, the feelings on her hand didn't mean anything until this one day. And these are Helen Keller's own words: “We walked down the path to the well house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water from the well, and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled out into the other hand the word, “water,” first slowly and then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness, as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought.

And somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful, cool something that was flowing over my hand, that living word awakened my soul; gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. I left the well house eager to learn. Isn't that beautiful? You've got the written word and you've got life, and the two of them go together and you've got to have both, you can't just have the one or the other, they go perfectly together. But ultimately, the Bible stands prophetically over our lives and explains to us what God thinks about the things that are happening to us, and so God wants us to do that. And so, they're physical reminders. Look at verse 8 and 9, “Tie them as symbols on your hands, and bind them on your foreheads, write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” Now, Orthodox Jews, as you know, have taken these verses literally. They have small leather boxes tied to their upper left arm and their foreheads, the box for the forehead contains four little compartments, the one on the arm just has one, but inside each of these compartments are little bits of parchment with the words of Scripture, the Pentateuch, from the Pentateuch written on them and rolled up and put in the little compartments.

They also have little metal containers called mezuzahs in which they put the same thing, rolled-up little piece of Scripture and they nail it to the door frames of their houses. Some Christians, for their part, have cross-stitched Scriptures up on the wall, or maybe painted with the words of Scripture there, or maybe just simply they take a 3 x 5 card and write out a Scripture verse and they put it up on the mirror or some place in the kitchen. A lot of times you go into a house and you see Joshua 24:4, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” It's written right there. But the Word of God is around all the time. And in these Jewish houses, basically when you walked in, you're saying, “This house is saturated by the Word of God, we're going to follow, we're gonna obey it.” It’s written on the doorframes of the house. It’s everywhere. Saturation of the Word of God. Now, that is Deuteronomy 6. It's speaking practically to us.

Let me give some more practical applications for you folks. First of all, concerning family devotions. Keep it simple. I found a website, actually, my wife did, an email. Don Whitney, who's preached here before, has written a number of books on spiritual disciplines. He talks about the discipline, the weekly, daily discipline of family devotions.

And he said, it's basically three components. It's read, pray, and sing. That's it. Read the Scriptures and pray and sing. Now obviously, he means more than just read, he means talk about them, etcetera, but the focus is on the reading and the understanding of the Word of God. At a recent deacon meeting, we were talking about family devotions, and we're talking about the need to keep it simple, to teach at a level that each child can understand, so we wanna keep it simple in that way as well. They're not to be complex what we do, you don't have to have an order of service, like we have here on Sunday mornings. But also you should keep in mind to teach at a level appropriate for the whole family, that's a challenge to do if you have as we do, a wide range of children age-wise, but still it's important. And the chairman of our deacons, I cleared this story with him, I never mentioned to anyone unless asking first, except myself, I can talk all kinds of stories about myself, but Daniel Johnson had a great example and patterns set for him by his father. For years, his father would just sit down and open up the King James Bible and just teach their family, and it was so normative in his life that that's what he expected, and he was excited, that's what he thought all families did.

And when he had his own family, he was eager to try it and couldn't wait. And finally, when Nathan was 3-years-old, he sat down, got open the King James Bible and just started to teach. Well, it wasn't long before Nathan was crying. And Lucinda said, Do you think it might be a little over his head? You might wanna teach it a little simpler. Well, Daniel told me this morning, he said, after that, in subsequent years, Nathan came to yearn for those times in delight. And Daniel adjusted his teaching. I was saying to Daniel this morning, I have to constantly make adjustments, we're going through 1 Corinthians now with my family, and I just need to be sure they're understanding what I'm saying that I don't shoot too high. Make it simple, teach it at a level appropriate for each child so they understand what is going on, and use available resources. Daniel gave me, for example, this book. This is a great book, this is the MacArthur Daily Bible. And some of you try to read through the Bible in a year, what this has done is, you're not just going Genesis right through Revelation, but he has, in a very intelligent way, organized a whole year's worth the pattern of reading. And this would be very helpful. There's a number of these for sale on the book table over there.

And also Lou Priolo's book, which I have here, Teach Them Diligently. Like I said, there's 20 of them over there. Plus, there's a bunch of resources that are not for sale. The people who are at the book table will tell you which is which, please note the difference. Some have just volunteered their materials, look at them and say, "This would be good for us. I'd like this." There are some things that talk about just ethical life situations, sticky situations, for example, and it just helps your young people who are going through ethical situations to know how to apply the Word of God in those situations.

Now, as I said last week, fathers more than anyone, I wanna urge you to commit yourself to study the Bible, to learn how to teach the Bible. 2 Timothy 2:15 says, “Study to show yourselves approved unto God, workmen who do not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” You may study the stock market or real estate to know how best to invest your money, you might study some technical journals in your profession to learn how to stay up-to-date in the way you earn a living, you might study a hobby, how to do wood-working better, or how to put in a new kitchen or something like that. You might study those things, you might study how to improve your golf swing. Well, all of these things may be of some benefit to you, but friends, there is no better study than to learn how to teach your children the Scripture. Study it, work at it.

And then I mentioned last time the need to set and keep goals for each child. I would urge you to meet with each child. We do it on the children's birthdays, once they reach age 10, we meet with them on their birthdays and we set up goals and we pray through them and challenge them to keep those goals, goals concerning Scripture memorization, prayer, reading, character goals. If they're struggling with some character issues, we try to get some Scriptures that would address each of those situations. We talk also about disciplining with Scripture and with love. We don't just discipline them, we try to bring the Scripture to bear on the situation, try to show them what the Word of God says in each of these situations, and we try to saturate life with thankfulness and worship. When the sun comes up, Psalm 118 says, “This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” We read that this morning on the way to church. It's a new day, God gave it to us, let's think about that. Or you're going through a trial, maybe a friend has really hurt you, your heart is broken, you're hurting right now, going through something tough. James says, “Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds.” Give them the Scriptures so that they know how to address life.

Now, as I think about you folks, I know that not every one of you, in fact, probably many of you do not have young children growing up or even all the way up to teen years, so I thought about different categories. There are some of you that do, and I've been speaking to you this morning. But then there are others who had that before but your children are grown or haven't, but it's not likely that in the future you'll have this for yourself. That doesn't mean these words aren't for you. You can still be an example and an encouragement to others who are going through that. We're in the body of Christ. We should care whether other people's families are well-ordered and are growing though. We can pray for each other. We can give other people books or things that we've found helpful. Don't say, “I have nothing to do with this 'cause it's not likely I'll ever have growing children in my family again.”

Or, in other categories, you may never have this because you're young, you're not married yet, you're a college student or even a young person, a youth. Still, prepare your heart for the day when God will bring a godly spouse into your life, and then the two of you may be blessed with children, and you'll have the opportunity to raise the children up in the fear and the nurture of the Lord. This is for everyone.

Now, I just wanna say, finally, a word of comfort and then one of exhortation. I think there are a few topics in life that can make people feel as guilty as the issue of how you raised your children. I noticed this, and I was talking to somebody recently about the analogy. Imagine you're wearing an interesting kind of Christmas sweater, aqua color and all that, and you find a piece of velcro or something like that, and it's got these awkward threads all over it. Well, you know where those threads came from, they came from your sweater. Well, how much more convicting is it to see certain specific sin patterns in your kids' lives? It is very convicting, very tough.

Secondly, we feel as parents, time goes faster and faster, doesn't it? It's not long before it's gone, they're out of the home, and we wanna make the most of the time, but it's flying by and life is so busy. Friends, there are few subjects that can make us feel as guilty as this one. Can I urge you not to look back except for one thing? With the guidance of the Spirit, to learn what he wants you to do for the future. Let the Lord cover any transgressions in the past and say, "From here on out, Lord, what do you want me to do? How am I to live my life to glorify you in this area?" Don't give in to depression or discouragement. Begin today and say, "Okay, where am I in my life? What can I do in this area? How can I grow?" Your kids may be almost out of the house, they may be fully grown, but you have grandkids, they're starting to grow, etcetera. Is there something you can do? Don't give in to discouragement, rather say, "Lord, this is the day you've made, I'm gonna rejoice and be glad in it, I'm gonna make the most of what you've called me to do."

I wanna finish with a quote I found from J. C. Ryle that really convicted me and encouraged me, and I wanna share with you. Ryle wrote, and he wrote in the 19th century, this is what he wrote, "I charge you fathers, take every pain to train your children in the way they should go. I charge you not merely for the sake of your children's souls. I charge you for the sake of your own future comfort and peace. Truly your own happiness in great measure depends upon it. Children have caused the saddest tears that man has ever had to shed. Such sorrows are heavy enough when fathers have faithfully discharged their duty, yet still live with a prodigal son or daughter, but who can bear the reproach of a stinging conscience that condemns us because we never brought them up in the fear of the Lord? How much better if we can say, 'Son, we taught you God's word, we wrestled for your soul in prayer, we lived a God-fearing example before you, you didn't see in us a sinless piety, but a genuine faith. You know that we sought first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Your conscience will bear witness that Christ is the center of this home.

We sang together, prayed together, and talked together. If you turn away from this light and these privileges and insist on going your own way, we can only pray that all your Bible study, praying and singing will not rise up against you in the Judgment Day, and that you will come to your senses before it's too late. We must so live and conduct family worship that our children will not be able to say, 'I am being bound hand and foot and being cast away into everlasting darkness because of your parental carelessness, your hypocrisy, your complacency about the things of God. Father and Mother, why weren't you faithful to me?" Close with me in prayer.

There's lots of ways to mark time, and the new year, in 2006, now a new year, is one of the ways to mark time. I think a Christian should never be depressed about the passing of time. Amen? We should be delighted in the fact that every day, every week brings us closer and closer to seeing Jesus. Every week, we get closer and closer to being done forever with sin. Every week, closer and closer to being done with these bodies, which of great benefit now, still are filled with corruption, and we look forward to the day when we'll have our resurrection bodies. Aren't you looking forward to that? 

So don't be depressed at the passing of time. You should be embracing and looking forward with that living hope that God has put in your heart through the Gospel that some day you're gonna see God face-to-face, the very thing that was forbidden in the Old Covenant. It's our gift. It's our reward, waiting for us at the end of life.

That wasn't even in my notes, but I just wanted to say it today. It's a delight to be here today and to focus on what I consider to be one of the most important topics facing First Baptist Church in the upcoming year. Recently, the deacons were meeting in small subgroups to look at various important issues in the life of the church, and I was on a number of those groups talking about some of those issues. One of them was evangelism, that's something very important to my heart.

It's a big challenge, isn't it? To be faithful and obedient in that external journey of worldwide disciple-making for Jesus Christ. That is not easy to do. To be continually faithful, bringing forth fruit, seeing people come to faith in Christ. We've been talking about that, and we've looked at the mission strategies, we've talked about ways to reach the Triangle region, we've looked at the various mission fields there are, whether inner city or university students, international students, white collar workers in the medical community or in the research RTP, just the huge number of people, the population swell, that's coming into this area because it's an attractive place to live, and those things are good for our church to look at.

But while we were talking about that, I just said, "Brothers, can I share something on my heart?" They said, "Sure." And so I said, "I believe that the most strategic and fruitful mission field, bar none, no other field is even close to it, the most strategic mission field there is, is that of Christian children in a Christian home. That is the most strategic field there is, the Christian home, and we should not assume that all is well in that area. We will be in big problems if we do.

As a matter of fact, statistics show that all is not well in that area. T.C. Pinckney, who was the second president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 200, had this to say. He said, "We are losing our children. Research indicates that 70%... now listen to this, 70% of teens who are involved in a church youth group will stop attending church within two years of their high school graduation. 70%."

Now, just think about that.That’s not just 70% of just youth in general, or even of churchgoers, but those that are involved in youth ministry, involved in a group, 70% will stop attending church within two years after they graduate. What does that say about those who don't even go to church at all? In a talk at Southwestern Seminary, Josh McDowell noted that less than one-third of today's youth attend church. If he's right and 67% do not go to church, then we lose 70% of those that do, you can see where we're heading. As a matter of fact, researcher George Barna says, "If the trends and the ways of thinking and approach to ministry continues, as it is now, across evangelical churches, attendance at those churches will be less than half of what it is today in 10 years." And other statistics tend to bear this out.

Tom Rainer, who taught a class that I took at Southern Seminary and does a lot of research on how well, how effectively we're reaching our culture and our people... He's put together a survey asking a series of questions to discern whether the respondent really understood the gospel, whether the respondent understood justification by faith alone and whether they were themselves born again, a series of questions, including the Evangelism Explosion question, "If you were to die tonight and you were to stand before God and he would say, Why should I let you into heaven? What would you say?" These kinds of diagnostic questions. Having put all that together, he comes up with these statistics: Of those that were born before 1946, 65% gave a positive affirming answer showing they did understand the gospel and they were saved, 65%. Between 1946 and '64, those born between those years, 35%. Those born between ‘65 and ‘76, the number was down to 15% that could give that kind of an answer. And between 1976 and 1994, it's 4% that could give an answer. Now that is scary. We are in danger of losing our young people, we're in danger of losing our youth.

Now, what is wrong? I went on a mission trip with a pastor out near Wake Forest named Scott Brown, who's done a lot of work in this area, a good friend of mine, I respect him a great deal. And he was speaking there in Romania about this very problem, and it's a problem in Romanian churches as well, not just here in America. But he had this to say, he said, "I submit that the biblical order for the church and the home has been unintentionally abandoned. The biblical equipping structures have been set aside, marriages have been dishonored, and fathers are not personally teaching their children anymore. Exemplary fatherhood has been reduced to taking the family to church, showing up at soccer games and recitals. What's so disturbing is that the churches are actually aiding and abetting this abandonment. The men in our churches, instead of plunging their energy into saturating themselves in God's word and training the future leaders of our country, preparing their children to be evangelists, deacons, elders, mentors, and Titus 2 women, they spend their strength and activities that ignore their basic roles as leaders and teachers of the next generation," He said, "In the absence of biblical training, our children will follow the way of popular culture."

Biblical order for the church and the home has been lost, and it needs to be recaptured. Specifically, we need to reclaim the supremacy and the sufficiency of the Word of God for the forms and practices of how we reach our young people, not just that we say that the Word of God is inerrant, we actually need to follow the patterns for youth ministry that there are in the Bible, and that is the leadership and headship of men in the home, that men would step up and take their responsibility for discipling their own children, raising their children up in the faith.

I wanna call on you, men who are leaders of homes in which there are children growing, as you have never done before to make 2006 a year of focus of evangelism and discipleship for your own children, I wanna challenge you to set goals, spiritual goals for your children. I want to challenge you to meet regularly with your children to see that those goals are met. I wanna challenge you to create around yourself a structure of accountability so that you really do these things that you say you want to do. I wanna challenge you to do that. I wanna challenge everyone else in the church to pray that those things will happen and to do what you can to facilitate them happening.

Now, as I look at Scripture, I could think of no better passage to address this topic than Deuteronomy 6. It's a magnificent passage. And for the next two weeks, we're gonna be looking at this issue from Deuteronomy 6. Now, what is the context of Deuteronomy 6:1-9? I've talked a little about what is our context. And by the way, I don't want you to think in any way that I am pessimistic or discouraged. I always believe that God's will will out, but it happens by this, by the hearing of the word and by obedience, and by men stepping forward and women stepping forward to do what they know is right. That's how it happens. And as this church is faithful to do it, we're gonna see magnificent fruit in our homes. So I'm not in any way pessimistic, not at all, but I am concerned, I am alarmed, and I want you to be as well.

Now, what was the context of Israel? Well, they're about to enter the Promised Land. You know what had happened, God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt by a mighty hand and outstretched arm. That generation that left Egypt, that saw God do ten miraculous plagues, that saw him move the water so that it was like a wall on the left and the right-hand side, they saw God do awesome things and provide manna and water out of a rock. But when the time came to enter the Promised Land, they refused to believe the promises of God. They refused to believe that God would be able to conquer the Promised Land. And so in their hearts, they turned back to Egypt. And so God punished that generation and said, "Not one of you will enter the Promised Land, except Joshua and Caleb. Not one of you onto the Promised Land, but your children will." And so for 40 years, they wandered. And now at the end of the 40 years, they have now come back, all that generation is gone, rather surprisingly, miraculously, 40 years, they're all dead. That's amazing. It was a judgment from God, but after 40 years, they come back, the time had come now for them to believe the promises of God and enter the Promised Land.

And so we have the Book of Deuteronomy, it literally means the second giving of the Law, and for the second time, Moses gave them the Law. But it's so amazing, you look at Exodus and Leviticus and all of those laws, and they're interesting, but it's a whole different situation when we get to Deuteronomy, there's so much more passion, there's more love, there's more basically pastoral ministry going from God through Moses to the Israelites, to urge them to obey the law so that it might go well with them. And then Deuteronomy 6 is one of the great focuses of that. Of special concern in Deuteronomy 6 and throughout the Book of Deuteronomy was the passing on of the Law from one generation to the next to the next, and that is the focus of Deuteronomy 6:1-9. It is a multigenerational vision, a multigenerational vision of spiritual protection and prosperity.

God has a vision for you and for your children and for your grandchildren and your great grandchildren, and this is a big enough job to take the rest of your life in fulfilling. You're not just done once your kids are grown and gone, but a multigenerational vision of spiritual protection and prosperity. I think we are shockingly near-sighted when it comes to that. We don't really know our ancestors very well, our great-grandparents, etcetera. We don't really expect to be known by our great grandchildren that well, but God is not that way, and we have a multigenerational vision of spiritual protection and prosperity here that will take the rest of our lives to fulfill.

Now, God's original strategy for the world was that God would fill the world with the knowledge of his glory by the propagation of the human beings who were created in his image. It says in Genesis 1:28, “God having created them in his image, God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply in number, fill the earth and subdue it.’” That was God's original plan.

Know that the world was already full of his glory, having been invested with his glory at creation, but it was our special job to know his glory, to delight in it, to see it, to think about it, and to thank him for it. And sin entered in and defaced and defiled the image of God, so that, yes, we biologically propagated, but we were not spreading the image of God, not in that way, now that the image had been defiled. And so there are people all over this globe, but the earth is not now filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

God's original pattern now is being reclaimed by the spreading of the gospel, and the Christian home, where Christ is at the center, where the word of God is honored, is reversing the effects of the curse in the human heart so that people then can live for the glory of God and see it in this world, and so the earth will some day be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Well, there's a multigenerational view, even in our text. Do you see it? Look at verses 1-3. This is the NIV, it says, “These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess," and look at verse 2, "so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God, as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord the God of your fathers promised you." Now, notice the number of generations there are just in these verses. First of all, in verse 3, it mentions the God of your fathers. We don't know how many generations that is because that could include, let's say Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on back like that. So from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob down to this generation that was about to enter the Promised Land, those were all their fathers.

So we don't know how many generations, but at least one. And then you and your children and their children after them, and then their children after them could include many as well. There's clearly a multigenerational view here, at least four generations, and I think more. And in order for Israel to survive and thrive in the Promised Land, a heart of obedience had to be passed on to the children and to their children after him, or God was going to evict them from the Promised Land. And so it isn't an idle thing when he says, so that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land. It's not an idle thing, because if they disobeyed the Old Covenant, disobey the Mosaic covenant, they would be evicted from the Promised Land, and so this had to be passed on to the next generation. And so it was a multigenerational view of spiritual prosperity, of prosperity and protection.

Prosperity, look what he says. He says, The land is rich and blessed by God. It's a land flowing with milk and honey. And he says, so that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life, and that you may multiply greatly.

Notice the repetition there of the original command given to Adam and Eve, that they would multiply, that they would fill the earth and multiply greatly. It was repeated when Noah and his sons got off the ark, God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Friends, let me tell you something. There is no place in the Scripture where God commands you to restrict your family size.

I've been talking to people who are generations before me, and they're not surprised by the fact we have five children, but you know how many people tell us, "Oh, you have such a large family, five children." Well, we are blessed by God to have these five children, we delight in them, we love them, we don't consider them a large family most of the time, sometimes we do, but for the most part, we don't. We are blessed by every one of them. I wanna challenge you to think biblically about family size, notice that here it's considered a blessing by God that you may multiply greatly in the land. And so it's a blessing, this is a prosperity for Israel.

God was giving the Promised Land to Israel on condition, obedience to the laws of Moses and central to this, as I've said, parents had to teach their children fear the Lord and obey his commands. They also needed not just prosperity but protection because they were going into a promised land which didn't hold ultimately a military threat, that's what they were afraid of. No, it was a spiritual threat. The Canaanites with their filthy, wretched practices could defile the people of God and lead them into their idolatrous worship so that they would be defiled and God would have to judge them.

So also, friends, for us there is a need for spiritual prosperity and protection, not just a physical promised land that we're gonna go enter and live in. We're talking about eternity in the very presence of God, what could be more important than that? And do we need protection, like the Israelites did? Yes, we do. We are surrounded by a non-Christian pervading, invading culture, and we must protect our children from it. We have to be living in this world without being polluted by the world, as the book of James says, and the only protection we have is to cling to and to follow and obey the word of God. What he says, the commandment, statutes and judgments, and not just to hear them, friends. The more you hear and don't obey, the worse off it is for you. It's actually, as it says in one place, “Better never to have heard than to hear and to turn your back on the sacred command that's passed on to you.

And so again and again, as it says in the New American Standard, “Now, this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, listen, that you may do them in the land.” Verse 2, “by keeping all his statutes.” Verse 3, “Hear O Israel and be careful to obey them.” It's not just the hearing of the Word, but actually a heart of obedience. Now, the centerpiece of all of this is loving God with all that you are. Look what it says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Jesus called this the greatest commandment in the Bible.

Now, I've often challenged people and say, "You know, Christians, we're not under the law, we're not under the law." I said, "Are you free from this command, this particular one? Free from the command to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? I would say no. So clearly, free from the law doesn't mean what they think it means. Free from the law means it's not by law that we are going to be justified in front of God. We're actually saved and brought back to the law and said, this is what I'm working in your hearts. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Now notice it begins with a command to listen. That's the command. Listen. “Hear O Israel.”Hear what? Well, hear the Word of God. Ideas... I mean, accurate ideas. Accurate ideas about God do not originate with people, they don't originate with human beings. Accurate ideas about God originate with God, and then he reveals them to us, he communicates them to us by His Word. And what does he tell us about himself here? Well, he reveals his essential nature.

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.” So important. God is one in Himself. We Christians, understand that to mean the Father, the Son, the Spirit; three persons, one God. I also go beyond that to say what it means is that there's a perfect and essential unity within God, something we could scarcely imagine. How many times are you torn in two different directions? How many times does your intellect go one way and your emotions another? That never happens with God. God is perfectly one, this is the nature of God, and the Father and the Son and the Spirit are all perfectly together on the salvation plan. That's what God is like.

Now, based on that self-revelation, God then gives to the human race what Jesus called the greatest command that there is: Love the Lord your God. Love Him with all of your heart and with all of your soul, and with all of your strength. Friends, this is the whole duty of man. Now what does it mean to love God? Well, it means to cherish Him. It means to consider Him, to esteem Him most valuable, like the treasure hidden in the field, you're willing to sell everything for Him.

Most glorious. It means to esteem Him above all others; the center, the very center of your universe. It means to find your pleasure in Him and be delighted in what delights Him. Now, the devils, they have spiritual information about God. They know that God is one, but they shudder and they fight, and they're opposed. I don't know. We know that God is one and we're delighted about it. We're glad that there is one God and only one God. We're delighted in Him. Now what does it mean when it says, "To love Him with all your heart and soul and strength?" Well, I say to you that this love for God must be so all pervasive, it covers every area of your life. Friends, there is no part or particle of God's universe about which He does not say, "This is mine," He claims it all. He claims your heart, it is His. He claims your strength and your soul. They are His. He means for you to cherish Him and esteem Him in your heart above all things.

He means for you to use your soul to sing to Him and worship Him and honor Him and your strength, to serve Him. It's all His and here, friends, is rebellion destroyed. Here is hypocrisy cast out. We can't fake it. God isn't looking for fake Christians, He's not looking for a façade, the white-washed wall of the Christian family, where it looks good on the outside, but inside they're full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. He's not looking for that.

He wants a genuine heart relationship with Him, parents and children alike. So this is the cnterpiece of everything, friends, this is the goal of our instruction. It is love from a clean and pure heart. That's what we're getting at. Now, it says that these commandments should be upon your heart. Look at verse 6: "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts." Now, I wanna take this and interpret it specifically for parents. I could talk about just in general, about Christians, but I wanna start with parents 'cause he's about to talk about it in verse 7. We're not gonna get to it this week, but it says, "Impress them on your children.” That's what he says to do. So first thing he says though, parents, "These commandments that I give you today, they need to be upon your hearts." You need to have God's words written in your hearts. They need to be impressed in your own minds first.

God is here commanding parents to cherish the very words of God, to cherish them. And it is not unreasonable to extend the words here, these commands that I give you today to all of scripture, for all scripture is God-breathed. And so it's not just the Mosaic commands as they're about to enter... No, the whole thing is to be alive inside you. And I have a simple diagnostic question to ask you parents, whose children are watching you every moment. Do they see in your life a cherishing of the words of God? Are you living out a cherishing of the words of God? Do they see you opening your Bible, reading it? Do they see you memorizing it? Do they see you studying it carefully? Do they see you obeying it? I'm not saying, do they see perfection in you? I'm not saying that. I'm saying, do they see a cherishing of the Word of God in your life?

Now, the blessings of the New Covenant is that God has written His Word in our heart already. It says in Hebrews 8:10, "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts." Friends, if you're a Christian, the Word of God is already, in some sense, written in your heart, but that doesn't free you from the responsibility to sit down every morning with your quiet time, open up the Bible and read. To read through the Bible in a year, to memorize a book of the Bible. It doesn't free you from that responsibility. My question is, do your children see you doing it? Do they see you cherishing the Word of God?

I came across, at least, I thought a useful riddle to apply to this situation. It went like this: How do you teach a parrot to speak? Answer: Have a larger vocabulary than the parrot. It seems obvious, doesn't it? Let me ask you a question. How do you teach the Word of God to your children? Have a larger vocabulary than your children. And you might say, "Well, I'm no Bible student, I'm no professor at a seminary or pastor, whatever.” You're called upon to “study to show yourselves approved unto God, workmen who don't need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” He's calling on you to do that. Have a larger vocabulary than your children. Study the word. Now, I wanna give here a special word to fathers. The father's role here is essential. It's vital. 

God has established the father's headship in the marriage and in the home. He does it in Ephesians 5 and in patterns throughout the entire Bible. It is, therefore, the father's role, ultimately, to train the children in godliness. Now, it is not an accident that Deuteronomy 6 in the Hebrew and also in certain translations, like the New American Standard, focuses on the father-son relationship. It's very interesting here. Let me read the New American Standard for verse 1 and 2, it's New American Standard Bible. And this is an accurate, literalistic translation that the Hebrew says:

“Now, this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgements, which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may do them in the land where you're going over to possess it, so that," listen, "you, your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, that your days may be prolonged."

Now, I talk to the staff about this, I said should I even bring this up? I mean the NIV just says, "So that you, your children and their children after them". And of course, in the wide range of biblical understanding, it is true that both father and mother must teach both son and daughter. That is true, and it's easy to prove from scripture, you get at least the mother's role in teaching the son in Proverbs 1:8. It says, "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching." So clearly both fathers and mothers have a teaching and discipling role for their children, but yet there is a primacy to the father and his role in the spiritual home. There's a primacy to it. And that's why I think it says, "So that you, your son and your grandson", because they will someday be heads of their homes and they will someday stand accountable to give an answer to God for their households. And so therefore, teach them well, teach them to take that responsibility seriously. That's my read on it. Whether you accept my read on it or not, the Hebrew stands, "so that you, your son and the grandson may obey the commands."

It's the same reason, I think, where it says in Ephesians 6:4, "Fathers do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Now, I've talked about this before, but I think the original sin was not that Eve ate the fruit. I don't think that was the first sin that ever happened, I don't think it was the first one. I think that the first sin that happened was that Adam didn't interfere when the devil was messing with his wife. Now, why is that a sin? Because God had commanded Adam in Genesis 2:15, to serve and protect the garden. And when Eve was created out of his body, she became part, I believe, of that command. It was Adam's job to be out there protecting that beautiful garden and his beautiful wife from the attacks of the evil one. But all you get in Genesis 3 is, "then she gave some to her husband who was with her". What is going on with that? What was he doing all that time? Was he saying anything, thinking anything, feeling anything?

“Uh-oh, this isn't good. But I'm not gonna say anything about it." What is he doing? Why isn't he stepping up and saying, "Be gone, Satan!"? Why isn't he like the Good Shepherd that goes out and meets the wolf, rather than waiting until the flock is ravaged? And so he was passive. He didn't step... And we still see it today, friends. The men do not step up and take their position of leadership in the home and the church like they should, and so we have big time problems. Well, it must not happen with us. We must be faithful as fathers. We are going to give an account. We're going to give an account and we can't leave it to others to do it. We need to have a strategy for discipling each of the children entrusted to our care.

I'm gonna talk more about details and specifics on how to do that next week, how to set spiritual goals for your children, how to hold them accountable, how to pray for them, those kind of specific things. Talk more about that next week. Based on verses 7 through 9, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. Write them on the door frames of your house and on... I'll talk about that next week.

But Andy Winn and I have talked a lot recently about youth ministry, and I can't even tell you the level of respect I have for Andy Winn. I just love him as a brother, I am so grateful that he's here, I'm so grateful for his worldview. I'm grateful that we totally agree about the things that we're talking about today. We've talked much about it. Both of us agree that no matter how godly he is or I am, or how good our programs are here, or our teaching, we cannot and do not desire to supplant the true youth ministers in this church. And you wanna know who the true youth ministers are? The parents, ultimately the father is responsible, but the parents are the true youth ministers of all the youth in our church.

And Andy and I, we are praying about and thinking about how best to reflect that in our youth ministry here in 2006. How can we best equip and strengthen parents to disciple? You realize, if Andy gets them once a week for however many... Something like 900 times, not just Andy, but any Sunday school teacher, whatever. 900 times until the year that they're 18, if you get them once a week. Parents, if they disciple their children, especially fathers every day, get about 6300 times of teaching, pointed teaching. And not only that, fathers get to teach, not just by sitting in an artificial kind of classroom setting with a book open, but they get to teach in every day life the way Jesus did with His disciples. "Follow me as I follow Christ," they can say. "Follow my example. Look how I do this, this is how I do that." There's no way the church can set up structures like that, no way, and nor was it meant to. And so therefore, fathers cannot leave youth ministry to the youth minister or to the pastor, we can't.

In saying that, I'm not trying to shirk my duty as a pastor any more than Andy as a youth minister. Quite the opposite. We are trying to embrace the biblical structures for youth ministry that are there and help facilitate them, not compete with them. That's what we're trying to do. We want you, young people, that are sitting and listening, we want you to love Jesus, we want you to follow Christ for your whole lives. We don't want you to drop out two years later, when you no longer have to go to church. We want you to cherish Christ with everything you have.

Now, what kind of application am I gonna take from this? Well, I'm gonna talk more specifically next week about applications, more about it, but I wanna just give one simple application, given it before, but I wanna give it again. I wanna challenge the fathers of this fellowship to be faithful in 2006 in having a daily family devotion time. It's really about as practical is this, you sit down in a chair, you get the Bible, you open it up, and you teach, and you share, and do it however you want. Let worship be part of it. Let's singing be part of it. Let prayer be part of it.

You could do ministry projects. You can do all kinds of stuff. You can do whatever the Lord leads you to do. But do it. Be faithful and do it. It doesn't have to be elaborate. You don't have to have some degree. I think if you feel like you're inadequate to do it, then 2 Timothy 2:15 says, "Study to show yourself approved". Sharpen your sword. But that's a great motivation to do that, isn't it? Sit down with your family, gather them around you, open the Bible and do it. Now, one thing I have to confess to you. We do not do it in our family as frequently as I'd like, and do you know why? It's because of the frantic, frenetic pace of American life.

You know what I'm talking about? I mean, how many meals do you miss because you're not all there, because of this or that activity? What I'm saying is, that I am speaking this to myself as much to you. God is not going to accept that as an excuse. He's not. He's not gonna say, "All right, well, you're Americans? Okay, I know, your lifestyle is way too frantic to do this. You're in a special category." And,f friends, I am not trying to hurt you. I'm not trying to harm you in any way. I said again, you need to discern... I said this in my prayer, to discern the difference between the devil's depression, which leaves you sapped of strength and the spirit's conviction, which motivates you to make some changes. There's a difference between the two. I hope you can tell the difference. If you're already being faithful to do it, praise God, do it all the more.

The second application I wanna give to you is this: As you set goals for your family, as you start thinking about each child, as you think about what you are doing for family devotion time, can you get some men around you to hold you accountable or at least one man? Say, "Brother, I wanna do this, and I don't know that it's gonna happen unless you hold me accountable. Will you pray for me, will you hold me accountable to really do this?" We need to step up and do this for each other. We need to help each other. And those of you that are not in that special category or not parents with children growing up, that doesn't mean you're free. Remember the multigenerational view.

Even if your kids are grown and gone and you really didn't do that, that doesn't mean you can't still be involved. You may have grandchildren, you can pray for them. Your children may be forming their homes. You can say, "Look, we didn't necessarily do it the right way, but these are some things that I've learned recently, I wanna help you." It may be that you're not even married yet, think about then what kind of Christian home you wanna have. Try to soak up as much information as you can get about the Christian life, and about leading a family in a godly way.

If you're a widow or widower, pray for us who are in the middle of the battle, who are trying to raise our children in a godly way, give words of encouragement, find ways you can help the Christian home. God means for the young people of First Baptist Church to live for His glory, to be the next generation of leaders and He means for parents to train them and specifically for fathers to step up and help in every way they can to make that happen. Let's pray now that it happens.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Psalm 32. The main subject of the sermon is how we should devote our lives to serving God through repentant faith and confession of sin.

Well, I stand before you today, a happy man, and a sinful man at the same time. Is that possible? Is it possible for a sinner like me to have the right to stand before you behind this pulpit and preach? I wrestle with that week after week after week. What right do I have to give anyone Godly counsel when I myself commit sin? And I find in Psalm 32 the only encouragement I can find, not just there, but also in other places that God can actually elevate sinners, forgive them, restore them, renew them and use them for his glory. Isn't that our hope, that our lives are not wasted here in this world? We know it was Martin Luther, the one who nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg castle, who taught that a man could be at the same time, both righteous and sinful. Well, it seems to me that Psalm 32 says, at the same time, we can be both happy and sinners, forgiven through the blood of Christ. It is possible. More than that it is actually our birthright as Christians. It is our birthright to know the joy of the Lord that is our strength, and it's a joy that just flows like a fountain from Psalm 32. “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” 

Now, as a pastor, as I think about counsel and Biblical wisdom that I'd like to give, and gifts that I'd like to give also from the Word, I'm always battling with this issue of sin and what to do about it and how to preach concerning it. It seems to me that we need to stand at a point of time like January 1st, 2006, to stand and look back and look forward, and it's interesting how we are called by the Bible to look backward differently than we are called to look forward. As we look back, we may see specific sins that we've committed, patterns of sin that have taken root in our lives and wonder, what can wash away my sin? How can I be made right with a holy God? Psalm 32 gives the joyful answer to that. Also, as we stand here and look ahead, we should do so with fear and trembling at the great power of sin to destroy every good gift that God would give us, and with a confidence that God's grace will be there for us at the time of testing to enable us to overcome sin's test. I think all of that flows so beautifully from Psalm 32, and we need an instructor today, and I can commend to you no better instructor than King David. I think he's the one who can stand with us here in Psalm 32 and teach us how to look backward at sins we've committed and find forgiveness and grace through confession and repentance, and he's also the one that can stand and warn us and say, "Don't do what I did." Sin is deadly dangerous. So stand firm and fight the good fight.

So what are the qualifications of our instructor, David? Why does he have the right to speak to us about this issue of confession and repentance? Well, I perceive in David's life, what I could call a continental divide. A continental divide is that place out in the Rockies where rainfall precipitation that flows, that hits on the west side of the divide, basically finds its way to the Pacific Ocean, and anything that lands on the East Side finds its way eventually to the Atlantic Ocean. It's a continental divide. I perceive such a divide in David's life. It's in second Samuel 11. And in second Samuel 11, there is the account of how David, during the time when kings usually go to war, was walking around on the roof of his palace and he spotted a beautiful girl, and you know the rest. And for a night of pleasure and a night of sin, everything changed from that way, from that time forward. Now I'm not saying that everything had been nothing but enjoyable and easy for David in his life up to that point. No question about it, there had been severe trials. Saul had been hunting him down like a wild animal. Saul's army would have killed him on sight, if they could have caught him. After the death of Saul, 10 of the tribes of Israel rebelled against him and did not want him to rule over them, and that started a bitter civil war, and there were many lives lost in that war. He didn't come easily to His throne. David had to fight to win his kingdom, and yet through all of it, he always had a sense of the abiding grace of God, the hand of grace in his life.

But from second Samuel 11 on, there's a change. Isn't there? The sword never departed from David's household. One night of pleasure and for the rest of his life, painful memories and effects. The basic lesson is that sin is too expensive for us to indulge in. It doesn't come free of cost. Can a man scoop live coals into his lap and not be burned? And David was burned even to the point of his own beloved son, Absalom, taking up the sword against him to seek to kill him, leading a revolt to topple him from his throne. David was never the same again. Now we have in Psalm 32, a display of David's humble, broken-hearted, repentance. Now, many have looked at David's sin, his terrible sin with Bathsheba and how he arranged to have Uriah killed, they've looked at that wrongly as somewhat of a carte blanch, a blank check to sin as much as you want, because God forgave David. What can I say to you, as one pastor put it this way, “It is easy to imitate David in his sin. It is not so easy to imitate him in his repentance.”

There's a story from church history. When the Emperor Theodosius slaughtered some Thessalonians, Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, was so repulsed that he refused to give the emperor holy communion, and the emperor said, “That's not fair. David committed worse sins than I did.” Well, to this Ambrose answered, “You have imitated David in his crime, then imitate him in his repentance.” And off and on for the next eight months, this emperor, the most powerful man on earth, was seen wearing sackcloth and basically begging in front of Ambrose's house in order that he might be forgiven by God. And so I say to you, we should not look at the example of David and say, “Look, he's sinned. Look what he did. And now he's up in heaven. Everything's fine.” Sin is never fine, it's never easy, it's never cheap, inexpensive. It always has its cost.

I believe that Psalm 32 probably is an insight into the worst year of David's life. The most horrible, from the time of his sin with Bathsheba until the time when Nathan confronted him in his sin, by that time, the baby that had been conceived was born, probably a little bit on in life we're talking about, I don't think it's a stretch to say at least a year in which he wrestled with the effects of his sin. And as we read between the lines in Psalm 32, and in the account in second Samuel, I think that we can come to the conclusion that a commentator, Alexander McLaren, did concerning that year.This is what McLaren said,” Thus he dragged through a weary year—ashamed of his guilty dalliance, wretched in his self-accusation, afraid of God, and skulking in the recesses of his palace from the sight of the people. David learned, what we all learn (and the holier a man is, the more speedily and sharply the lesson follows on the heels of his sin), that every transgression is a blunder, that we never get the satisfaction which we expect from any sin, or if we do, we get something with it which spoils it all. A nauseous drug is added to the exciting, intoxicating drink which temptation offers, and though its flavor is at first disguised by the pleasanter taste of sin, its bitterness is persistent though slow, and clings to the palate long after that has faded away utterly.”

There's always something mixed in there with the sin, and then that becomes the overwhelming and the bitter taste that's left, and so it was for David. By the time that Nathan the prophet came, David was ready to confess his sin, wasn't he? God had made him ready, but this was a miserable year for him, Matthew Henry put it this way, “One would think that it should be followed that the Lord sent enemies to invade David, terrors to take hold of him, the messengers of death to arrest him, but no, he sent a prophet to him. [Chapter 12 verse 1 of second Samuel, it says,] ‘And the Lord sent Nathan unto David,’…David had wandered far, but he was not lost. O how tenderly God watches over his sheep! How faithfully he goes after and recovers them, when they have strayed! With what amazing goodness does he heal their backslidings and continue to love them freely… It is to be duly noted that it was not David who sent for the prophet, though never did he more sorely need his counsel than [then]. No, it was God who took the initiative: it is ever [always] thus, for we never seek him, until he seeks us…’Though God may allow his people to fall into sin, he will not allow his people to lie still in it.’” 

And so God sends Nathan. He takes the initiative. He goes and seeks and saves what is lost. We're all like sheep wandering astray and the Lord comes and gets us. And it may be that God has coming to get you this morning. It may be that you have been wandering and straying in sin, and through the words of Psalm 32, through a messenger as sinful as me, really ultimately through David and through the inspiration of David, through the Holy Spirit, God may be coming to get you this morning and bring you back where you need to be. Then, it was Nathan speaking to David. Now, it's David speaking to you. Look what he says in verse eight and nine, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” 

Do you not see the warning there? Don't go through what I had to go through. Don't taste the effects of sin and the Lord's discipline. Learn ahead of time by reading rather than after the fact, by living it. It's so much better to learn by reading, isn't it, than afterwards to live just how bitter is sin and how harsh and difficult are the Lord's disciplines? So he said, “Don't be like a horse or a mule, that's gotta be hauled in the right direction, but listen and take counsel.” So David is our instructor, and David has had a thorough education in sin and in grace. These are his credentials. And that's what I wanna teach you. A sin is his own teacher. You've had enough lessons in that college, that university. And so also grace is a teacher, and David was an expert in both. David's desire is to teach us his lessons and he's ready to be our mentor. In a parallel Psalm, Psalm 51, David praying to the Lord said, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.”  That's his ministry to us. Because God restored him, he can then help and restore us as we wander and stray.

Well, what is the nature of the forgiveness of sins? This is the first lesson. Look at what he says right at the beginning, in verse one, “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven.” I think he gives us three pictures of forgiveness and what it is. The first is a lifting up of a load. The Hebrew word here in this word forgiven is to lift, or to bear or to carry as if carrying a heavy burden. The Prophet Ezekiel had to the same word is used of how he put his possessions on his back and carried them out through the city wall. There's a sense of a heavy burden that's lifted and being carried, “Blessed is he whose transgressions are [lifted up and carried].”

Now, it's metaphorical here clearly. Sin is a burden. It's a violation of God's holy law. It produces guilt that weighs us down. There's a sense of impending judgment. If it goes on any length of time, we may begin to wonder if we're Christians at all, and then comes a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God, it says in Hebrews 10. What a terrifying burden it is to live under that all the time. What a burden of guilt and of sin. And it was God from the very beginning that established the link between sin and the death penalty. He said to Adam, in Genesis 2:17, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” And so there's a link between sin and death. All sin deserves a death penalty. Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” Oh, what a burden to live under that to have a sense of impending judgment, a sense of the guilt and the defilement of sin. It's a great burden, isn't it? Somewhat like swimming when caught by a fishing net, that's weighted and it's tangling you up and dragging you down as if to drown you. What a terrible burden is sin and guilt.

Therefore, conversely, forgiveness is the lifting up of that burden, the taking off of that burden from our conscience so that we don't stagger under it anymore, but we are free and light. I remember I used to go hiking with my father in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and we would go for several days, and these heavy packs were on our backs, I will never forget it, and we'd be hiking up the mountain and it was just heavy, but you just kinda got used to it, just taking every step with the extra 40 to 50 pounds on your back. But then we would take a break and we would take our packs off, and I felt like I was floating. I literally didn't think my feet were touching the ground, it was an odd feeling, like what it would be like to be on the surface of the moon, somehow our weight greatly reduced. And some of you need that today. I'm not saying anything, but it's that time of year when you're looking on a scale and you wish that you are living on the moon and not on the surface of the earth. That's a very expensive way to reduce your weight. 

But there's this sense of a lifting of the burden, a sense of lightness. That is forgiveness. There's that beautiful image in Pilgrim's Progress in which Christian comes to the cross, and for the whole first part of the story, he's been laboring under a load. Some commentators think it was related to Bunyan, who was a tinker, a knife-sharpener and a pot repairer. He used to carry a whetstone, a heavy stone on his back, and he knew what it was like to carry a heavy burden everywhere he went. And so that's a picture of the guilt and the weight of sin, and forgiveness is a lifting of the load. That's the first picture that David gives us. 

The second is a covering of our nasty defiling mess. Look at what it says in verse one, “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” Now, you know, in the 1970s, around the time of President Nixon, the Watergate scandal, there was a lot of talk about a cover-up, and since then there have been many government cover-ups. We talk about cover-up in reference to sin. Cover-up, connected to Enron or some other scandals. There's always this sense of a cover-up, a desire to hide what is shameful.

This is what Adam and Eve did from the very beginning. You remember Adam and Eve took those fig leaves, those pathetic fig leaves, and tried to cover themselves and they're also hiding behind trees. There's the cover up there. It's always a sense of that. But what's amazing to me about the Gospel is that frankly, in the end, God agrees that that is what must be done. In the end, he says it must be covered. Sin has to be covered. You remember that God covered Adam and Eve with the skins of animals, and in the end, that is all that God can and will do with sin. He must cover it. The most significant aspect of forgiveness therefore is that is a covering. Sin must be covered, because there's nothing else that can be done with it. Now, you might say, “Well, I thought God can take away my sin.” Friends, think of it this way, if Adam and Eve had sinned and God were to completely take it away, he would probably have to speak that universe out of existence, speak a new pristine and pure universe back into existence and start all over again. But there's a problem, isn't there? In universe one, which now no longer exists, now that we're into universe two or universe 10, Universe one still exists in a very important place, doesn't it? Where? In the mind of God, and he will never forget it. He can't, lest he denies his omniscience. He will always remember. And therefore, he must cover sin.

Now you say, “Wait a minute, Pastor, there's some verses that seem to say that sin can be completely removed from us,” and they can relationally. Listen to this, Psalm 103, it says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Or you might quote Micah 7:19, “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” But do you not see the covering in both cases? The sin has not been spoken out of existence. It's merely been covered by infinite distance as far as the east is from the west. So also, the sin doesn't stop existing at the bottom of the sea, but God has covered it over with the raging billows of the ocean. And so therefore, his ultimate strategy with sin is to cover it with something far more significant, something far more precious. And that is the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross. That's what he covers our sin with. That's the cover up that works. That's the one that matters. That's our salvation. The day of atonement in the Hebrew Bible, Yom Kippur, it's literally the day of covering. The word Kippur is the covering, like the covering that Noah put over the roof of the ark to keep the rain off. It's a covering. And that's exactly what God does with sin. He covers it. That's the second picture of forgiveness. 

Thirdly, not reckoning sin to our account. There's a sense of a ledger book. Look what he says in verse two, “Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him.” It’s the issue of an accountant's ledger book. Accountants have to keep careful records. Accounts receivable. Accounts payable. Everything carefully accounted for. Does God have that kind of record book? Yes, he does, more than you can even imagine. Jesus said we'd have to give an account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word that we’ve spoken. And he has a careful record book of everything.

But here's the beauty of forgiveness. He doesn't impute or count our sin against our record book, but rather he gave that to Christ and took Christ's perfect righteousness and imputed it or counted it to our account. That is the foundation of our forgiveness. He doesn't count our sins against us, but rather he does count Christ's righteousness for us. He says this, when Paul is quoting Psalm 32 in Romans 4. It says this. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. There we have the righteousness of Christ credited or counted to our account, and we have our sin not credited, not counted to our account. Oh, isn't that enough to make you happy today? That God has come and lifted the burden of guilt off of us. He's covered our mess. He has imputed not our sin against our account, but rather Christ's perfect righteousness.

Well, David doesn't just talk about what forgiveness is, he also describes the miseries of unrepentance, the miseries of those who will not confess their sins. First, he speaks of deceitfulness. He says, "And in whose spirit is no deceit." You know, I think it's specifically deceit about sin. Oh, we all lie to ourselves about how good we are. We tell ourselves that we're really better than we are. We minimize our sin. We are deceitful concerning sin. And David says, "…In whose spirit is no deceit." He knew about that deceit for, in my opinion, over a year. He ate his food and drank his drink and lived his life with Bathsheba and went about his business, but all was not well. He was deceiving himself. The deceit of those that will not repent, that will not confess. 

There's also a stubbornness there. Look at verse three and four, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." Do you see David digging in his heels and stubbornly resisting? Day and night, your hand was heavy upon him. He's fighting. He's stubborn. He's hardening his own heart against God. Also see the physical misery. He talks about his bones wasting away. He talks about groaning all day long. He talks about his strength sapped as in the heat of summer. Friends, there are definitely physical effects to sin.

Now, I know from the book of Job, not every disease is directly connectible to a specific sin committed. We learn that from the book of Job. But we learn from the book of James that there are some that are. There are some physical ailments and diseases and troubles that we have because we have committed sin, and we have not dealt with it, we've not confessed it. It says in James 5, "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.” Listen to the very next words. ”The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven." Why did that come in so quickly? "If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." Do you not see how clearly, in James 5, there are some maladies, some illnesses, some pains, and diseases that are directly connected to sins we've committed, and if we would just confess them, and if we would just ask God for forgiveness, he would heal us of the illness that he brought on us because of our sin.

And so, there are physical miseries. There are also spiritual miseries. A sense of opposition from the Lord, a sense that God's hand is against you. Since that you don't enjoy prayer anymore, you don't enjoy reading Scripture anymore, you don't delight in singing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs anymore. You're under the burden of guilt, and so you can't enjoy your relationship with Christ. How many Psalms do you think David wrote during that year that made it into the Bible? I see a bunch of paper, if they had it back then, papyrus or something crumpled up and thrown away as he keeps trying to do what he used to do so easily. Just write a Psalm to the Lord, he just couldn't do it. Now, this is all speculation. I have no idea. But I know this in my own life. When I have unconfessed sin, I do not enjoy my walk with Christ. It's harder to have a quiet time. It's harder to come to church. It's harder to have good Christian fellowship. All of those things are harder, because of sin. There's a spiritual opposition.

And then, there's life woes, just difficulties, things that happen in providence. Do you realize that God just totally and completely controls his universe? Do you realize that a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground apart from the will of God? Do you realize the very hairs of your head are all numbered? Do you realize that a lot is not cast into the lap, except that it's every decision is from the Lord? Do you think David had some life woes and difficulties during that year? Do you think some things went against him? That there were some reverses in his life? Do you think God might have been trying to get his attention? Look at verse 10, he says there, "Many are the woes of the wicked." Do you think he might have been speaking about himself, his own year? What a bad year it's been. And in your life, it could be financial difficulties. It could be unexpected bills. Could be relational difficulties. It could be reverses at work or at school. There could be all kinds of things that are fully at God's disposal. Woes of the wicked, difficulties in life. These things, friends, are the miseries of those who will not repent, who will not confess their sins.

Well, what is the nature of true confession? What does David give us that tells us what confession is? Well, look what he says in verse five, "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin." And so, therefore, you know what it is? Confession is uncovering your sin before God. Taking off the fig leaves in front of him. There's a key insight from the book of Proverbs. The Proverb is printed in your outline. It's Proverbs 28.13, and it says that, "He who conceals his sin does not prosper. But whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy." You know, basically, verse two says, "Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord covers." And verse five says, "Cursed is the man who covers his own sin." So, basically, friends, brothers and sisters, it all comes down to this. Someone is going to cover your sin. Someone's gonna cover it. It's either gonna be you or the Lord.

Now, how well will it go for you if you cover your own sin? Well, Proverbs 28.13 says, "You will not prosper." It says, "He who conceals his sins does not prosper." Specifically, conceals them from God. And so, therefore, confession is going to God and uncovering the sin. Call it by its true name, not those glossy kind of shiny names that we give to sin. You know what I'm talking about, fibbing and, I don't know, I don't even wanna say all those words. Let's call them by their real name, pride, anger, lust, laziness, selfishness, greed, gluttony. Let's call them what they really are. Uncover the sin before God, call it by its proper name. Don't conceal it anymore. Confession means God hears what I did. And it's done voluntarily. It's done 'cause you want it covered by God. You're glad to have God take the burden from you. You're glad to have him cover it. To have Christ's righteousness credited to your account. You're glad for that. David was eager by the time Nathan came. You do it voluntarily, not under compulsion. And you do it before the Lord.

Look at verses five and six, "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found." Do you see how intensely relational with God it is? Therefore, you're uncovering your sin to God before his holy eyes, and you're telling him what you really did. He confessed it before the Lord to restore, first and foremost, his relationship with the Lord. Now, this point is made almost shockingly in the parallel Psalm, Psalm 51 and verse four. Remember where it says there, "Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are right when you speak and [prevail] justified when you judge?" Isn't that a little odd? I mean, didn't Uriah lay moldering in his grave because of David's sin? Wasn't Bathsheba's character defiled and her life and world turned upside down because of David's sin? Wasn't there a dead baby because of David's sin? Didn't his whole nation have to go through another civil war when Absalom tried to seize the throne because of David's sin? Wouldn't there be other Israelites who would die because of David's sin? Yes, to all of those. But here's the point, sin is directly an affront to Almighty God. It is first and foremost against him and him only that we sin, and therefore, the confession must be intensely directed toward the throne of God. That's what confession is. We're going to God, before his holy eyes, we are uncovering what we have done. And it's done in prayer.

He says in verse six, "Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found." Confession must be done in prayer. You have to speak to the Lord, friends, what he's been speaking to you. Isn't that the point? Confession is agreeing with God. He's been saying this to you, "It's sin. It's sin, it's sin. It's sin." You've been hardening your heart, not listening. Finally, you just can't do it anymore. You say, "I agree, you're right." And you speak to the Lord in prayer what he has been speaking to you through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Maybe you need to do even a little digging work. Maybe you need to just lay yourself out on the bed or on the ground, and say, what David says in another place, Psalm 139, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Find anything in me that I'm missing. We have such deceit, such blindness to sin. We just say, "God, I'm gonna be here a while. Just show me what's hindering my life with you." And he does. He shows it to you, and at that moment, you just confess it and turn it all back to him. Confess it in prayer and ask for his forgiveness. And, friends, do it while he may be found. Is there not a warning there? "…let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found." Friends, we have a window of opportunity. It is not going to be open forever. You have a window of opportunity today. God has allowed you to live to this moment. You have an opportunity now to confess your sins. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” It says in Isaiah 55, "Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will [abundantly] freely pardon." Or, to put it another way, if today you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. If God is speaking to you right now about sin in your life that you have not confessed. Do you not feel the sweet invitation of this incredible Psalm? Saying, "Step through the window of opportunity before it closes. Confess the sin while God may be found." Confess it to him.

Now, what are the results of true confession? Oh, these are the good things. What happens if you do it? Well, how about happiness? Everybody wants happiness. That's what the word blessed means. That's how the whole Psalm begins. Happy. Happy is just not enough, though. We don't really know the happiness that comes from a perfect sense of our forgiveness. Some day we will. Oh, we will be eternally blessed in heaven, eternally happy. But we can drink from that fountain now. We can have a sense of happiness now, a sense of worship, happiness and worship in knowing that we are forgiven. It's better than the happiness that comes from secular entertainment, certainly better than that which comes from an alcoholic drink or an illegal drug. Those things are evil and bring no ultimate happiness. But this is a happiness that lasts, the happiness of knowing that your creator is at peace with you and you with him, happiness and worship, a sense of confidence. It changes a sinner like David from a sick, broken, wretched individual to one who can truly sing worship songs from his heart.

Look at verse seven, “You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance." Verse 11, "Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart." That's worship, friends. That's happiness. You want happiness? Confess your sins. Also, there's a sense of security. Look at verse six and seven, "Surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance." Because of being right with God, the sinner now has a sense that they're free. They're safe. The greatest danger has been averted; we will not go to hell. We will not be condemned by God for our sins. We are safe, and God is with us, and he is our shield and he is our protector, and we are safe. A sense of security, not of insecurity.

And ministry, finally, to other sinners. I began this way. How could a sinner like me get up and preach to you? Do you know how many times the devil gets me with that one? Especially on Saturday nights. I have to pray through that every Saturday night. What right do I have, as a sinner, to talk to these folks about God? Well, I don't have any right any more than Peter had a right to preach the Pentecost sermon. And believe me, I'm not minimizing sin. But I know this, that a sinner like David can teach and instruct other sinners how not to sin and how to confess, and that's what he does here. Look what he says in verse eight and nine, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you."

Now, you may say, ”This is the Lord speaking,” but look at verse nine, "Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you." I think he's speaking about his own experiences. That's the way I was. And it doesn't matter much whether it's the Lord or not, this is inspired Scripture. And so, it is ultimately God speaking through David, isn't it? And He is instructing sinners on how to confess sin. God has ordained a ministry for recovered sinners. We sit at the table of grace and mercy, and we can therefore say, "Come and sit at a banquet I didn't prepare, and feast on what grace and mercy feels like." I hope you're not hearing carte blanche to sin as much as you want. I'll have to go back and start again. Sin isn't worth it, but let me tell you, there is a table of grace at which we sit and we are restored. And then, we can have a ministry of mercy to other sinners. That's exactly what David does.

Now, I can't finish without telling you something. Something I hope you already know, and that is that Christ fulfills Psalm 32. Someone had to pay for this. Someone had to foot the bill for the happiness that's described here. Who paid for David's sin? Who lifted David's load and carried it on his shoulders? Who is it that shed the blood that was the block between God's holy eyes and David's actual life? And who is it that exchanged his righteousness for David's wickedness, so the ledger book is clean and only speaks of wealth, spiritual wealth? It is Christ and no other. Jesus lifts our load. It is Jesus who sheds the blood that covers our sin, and there is no other covering that will do it. And it is Jesus whose righteousness is our only hope on Judgment Day. Christ is Psalm 32. Psalm 32 is like a treasure map. Jesus is the treasure. And so, therefore, on the cover, you've got the cross. A picture of the cross. Go to the cross. Go there again and again and again. Not just once, not just January 1st, 2006. But over and over throughout the year, confess your sin. Christ is the fulfilment of Psalm 32.

Now, as I come to a point of application, I just wanna ask a question. This morning, who is covering your sin? You or the Lord? Are you covering anything? Are you hiding anything? Is there anything in your life that's in your mind now, of which you are ashamed, it's hindering your walk with Christ? Uncover it. Confess it. I don't usually urge people to come forward and kneel, but if you'd like to do that, do it. Come forward, put a flag in the year, and say, "I wanna begin with no outstanding sin balance. I wanna confess anything I can." You don't have to come forward to do that, you can just lean forward in your pew and do it right there. But don't walk out of this place with a burden of guilt of unconfessed sin. Confess your sins to the Lord. And then, live a life of constant repentance and confession before him.

Don't expect that today, right now, is the last time you'll have to do it in the year 2006. Let's talk again in about 90 minutes, okay? You'll have to do it again and again. The first of the 95 Theses that Luther nailed was this, "When our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, said, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ he meant for the whole Christian life to be one of repentance." You'll be repenting the rest of your life. Keep short accounts with God. As soon as you sin, confess it. Immediately confess it, and let him forgive you, and do it while he may be found. Don't put it off. If you're hearing me speak to you right now, and you are not in a right relationship with Christ, come to faith in Christ now. And if you are, but you have been wandering and drifting and straying from Christ for whatever reason, come back to him. Come back to the cross. Pray to him while he may be found. It says, "Let everyone who is godly pray to him while he may be found." It's even for those that are in a right relationship with him, but they need to come back and they need to ask forgiveness. Do it. Close with me in prayer.

We're looking tonight, at a section of the Scripture that I was preaching on this morning, in Romans 11, if you just turn there for a moment, we're going to spend much of our time in the Old Testament. But in Romans 11:25-26, Paul says concerning this incredible mystery that I talked about this morning, he says, "Brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, so that you may not be conceded. Israel has experienced the hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in." And then he says in Verse 26, "And so, all Israel will be saved." And then he seeks to support that from Scripture, "As it is written," he says, "The deliverer will come from Zion, He will turn godlessness away from Jacob."

Now, we have seen consistently, the way the Apostle Paul seeks to support his doctrine from the Word of God. I still think one of the most incredible, one of the most exciting times in redemptive history, that I would love to have been there when this happened, is when Jesus after His death, after His resurrection, spent 40 days with His disciples, teaching them the Old Testament Scripture. That's what He spent His time doing, that and eating fish. One of them I can understand the other I can't, and never will, but that's what He did. He spent time eating with them and He spent time opening the Word of God. And so, a fisherman from Galilee named Peter, stands up in the day of Pentecost and just spouting one Old Testament Scripture after another, showing things, saying things that have been fulfilled that the Jews had not noticed, had not seen.

And I'll tell you this, the longer I go in my Christian life, the more I go on studying the Word of God, the more amazed and astonished I am at the interconnection of the Word of God, the consistency of the Word of God, the way that the New Testament is so completely and totally based on the teachings of the Old Testament. How they are not two different messages, they're not two different words. Something that went up to a certain point, and then it was abrogated, and we go in some different direction. I think this is so obvious from the way the Apostle Paul behaved in his ministry.

We see again and again, in the life of Paul, how he sought to establish his doctrine by reference to the Old Testament Scripture. For example, in Acts 9, right after his conversion, it says, "Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus and at once, he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem, among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priest?" Acts 9:22 says, "Yet, Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ." Now, how do you think he did that? What did he use in the synagogue of Damascus to prove that Jesus is the Christ? Well, we know clearly from his later behavior, it must be the Scripture that he was using, it must be the Old Testament Scripture. For example, in Acts 17:1-3, it says, "When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica," that's in the Northern part of Greece, modern Greece, "Thessalonica, where it was a Jewish synagogue. As his custom was," that's a key phrase, "As His custom was, Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbath days," listen, "He reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead." This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ, he said.

And so there he is, taking the Old Testament Scripture, the law, the prophets, the writings, and using the Scripture to prove that Jesus is the Christ. And again, later on that same missionary trip, he goes down to Berea, and we hear about the Bereans much. We desire ourselves to be Bereans in this sense, how it says in Acts 17:11, "The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." So clearly, again, there in Berea, what is Paul doing? But opening up the Old Testament Scriptures, seeking to prove and to establish his doctrine thereby. He does the same thing throughout the book of Romans, we've seen it again and again. Look at the very beginning of the book of Romans, look at Romans Chapter 1, Verse 1-4. It is true that in eons past, I preached on this section of Scripture. You can look in the tape record it's there.

I don't know what was going on in redemptive history at that point, but I did preach on Romans, 1:1-4. But you don't need to listen to my tape, just open up in Romans 1, there it is, now Verse 1-4, and this is what it says. Right at the beginning of Romans, it says, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God. The Gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures." So the Gospel is promised ahead of time in the Old Testament Scripture. That Scripture regarding His Son. And so he goes on from there. And then again, in Romans 1:16-17, as we've heard many times, "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is from faith to faith." And here's that key expression you're going to find again and again in Paul, "Just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith." He's constantly establishing his doctrine, really right from the beginning in Romans 1, by the Scripture.

In Romans 3, he goes through these quotations, one quotation after another. Romans 3, verses 10 and following, it says, "As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have turned aside, they've together become worthless. There is no one who does good, no, not one. Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, the way of peace, they do not know." He is just lumping one Old Testament Scripture on another to prove the universality of sin. He's using the Scripture, to prove this. He does it again in Romans 4 when he's talking about justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. He says in Romans 4, "What then shall we say that Abraham our forefather discovered in this matter? If in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does the Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.'" So there it is, he's trying to establish again, and again, his doctrine from Scripture.

Now, whatever he did in Romans 1-8, in seeking to do this, whatever he did to establish his doctrine in the basis, the Old Testament Scripture, only escalates greatly, it greatly intensifies when it comes to this whole question of the Jews in Romans 9-11. I've counted at one point, 27 different quotations or illusions in these three chapters. He is super saturating Romans 9-11 with one quote after another, and his favorite source seems to be Isaiah the prophet. He's going again and again to Isaiah and to the other prophets and to the writings, to prove the doctrines he's establishing. Romans 9, he talks about Jacob and Isaiah, and he talks about the experience at the burning bush with Moses, he's quoting again and again, "I lay a stone in Zion, a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." He talks about Isaiah crying out boldly, "Although the number of Israelites be like the grain of the sea, only the remnant will be saved." He's quoting all of these Scriptures, one after the other.

But now he gets to Romans 11:26, and then he's seeking to prove this mystery, the mystery we talked about this morning, namely; all Israel will be saved. What is he going to reach for to prove this mystery? He's already told us that it's a mystery, and so therefore, he's going to be reaching for a Scripture that doesn't openly and directly teach it but alludes to it or sets the stage for it. That's why it's a mystery, it's not openly taught but it's there, the foundation is there concerning the salvation, the future of salvation of the Jews.

And this is what he reaches for, he reaches for Isaiah 59:20. So turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 59:20, you can keep your finger in Romans 11 if you want. And I want you to compare it. Now, one of the reasons I'm doing this, was something I read as I've mentioned this morning, and I've mentioned before, on a Jews for Judaism website. You ought to go there, it really is amazing to look at some of the way that these Jewish folks seek to deal with the prophetic scriptures that we hold so dear. I believe, as I've been reading their website, looking at the way that they seek to refute Christian handling of Scripture, that I feel like I'm back in the ancient days sitting next to Paul as he reasons with the Jews in the synagogue and they won't listen. And trying to figure out, "What are they going to say, that Isaiah 53?" Well, if you want to know, go and find out. How could they ever refute what Jesus said in Psalm 1:10 or in Psalm 22? "They have pierced my hands and my feet." You go and find out, it is so disappointing actually. You keep thinking, "Well, maybe there's some insight that we haven't seen," but all you end up seeing is hardness of heart.

That's what you end up. You're looking right at that veil that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3, that covers their hearts where they cannot see the plain teaching in Daniel 7, about the Son of Man receiving glory and honor from all the nations and tribes and peoples. It's an incredible thing that they just cannot see the truth of the Scripture. But here he's going to Isaiah 59:20. And Jews for Judaism says Paul is twisting the Scripture, he's twisting it. So I thought, "I'm going to take this one on, we're going to look at it." And the more I looked at it, the more amazed I was. Have you ever been at the ocean where you're bobbing on the ground, feeling the sand under your feet, and you keep going out a little deeper, and then all of a sudden the bottom drops out. And you're treading water if you can, if not you need to hurry back and be on the beach, because the bottom just fell out from under your feet. And that's what I feel like, it's just incredibly deep. And it shouldn't surprise us because that's exactly where we're going, in Romans 11, where Paul cries out, "Oh the depth of the riches, the wisdom and the knowledge of God." It's a deep thing that he's getting at here. But what Paul does is he reverses, exactly reverses the language of Isaiah 59:20.

Now, if you're going to say, "Did Paul believe that Isaiah was inspired by the Holy Spirit as it was written?" No question about it, but what he's doing is he's going actually beyond what Isaiah says now in the New Testament, the new covenant, with the new insights and information we have with the coming of Jesus and all that, and he's not in any way contradicting what Isaiah says, but he actually is intensifying it and he does it in a way that perfectly fits into the context of Isaiah 59. To some degree, he's understood it better than any of his modern detractors ever could. What does he do? Well, let's compare it. In Verse 26 of Romans 11, it says, "The redeemer will come from Zion, He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." But then in Isaiah 59:20, it says, "The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins."

So there's two halves to this, and he turns both of them backwards. In the first one, it is either the Redeemer comes from Zion, or the Redeemer goes to Zion, now which is it? Secondly, is He coming to people who have already repented of their sins or is He going to come and turn godlessness away from Jacob? Which of the two is it? Let's take the first clause and try to understand it. Namely, this idea; did the Redeemer or does the Redeemer come from Zion or does He go to Zion?

Now, the word Zion as you study it in the Scripture, the first time it's ever mentioned is in 2 Samuel 5:67, where it says that King David conquered the city of Jerusalem. That's the first time the word Zion ever appears in the Bible. It says there, "The king and his men marched to Jerusalem to attack the Jebusites who live there. And the Jebusites who are living there, said to David, 'You'll not get in here, even the blind and the lame can ward you off.'" Well, Jerusalem is actually notoriously difficult to conquer. It's way up on a mountain and the sides drop off all around and it's really, very, very difficult to conquer. All the armies that came to lay seed to Jerusalem had to deal with the physical lay of the land. It's a mountain, it's tough to get up to. It makes it difficult, but David found a way.

And so therefore it says, "Nevertheless, David captured," now, listen what it says. "The fortress of Zion, the City of David." Now, that's the first time the word Zion appears, it is Jerusalem, the City of Jerusalem. And this use is repeated again and again and again, Zion equals Jerusalem. But it's more than that, Zion becomes a symbol of the place where God dwells with man on Earth, the place where God has fellowship with the human race. This is signified by the coming of the Ark of the Covenant, and then later on with Solomon, when he builds the temple, and this is the place, above the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant where God Almighty is going to be meeting with the Jews, and it's represented by what they say, the Shekinah glory, the visible representation of the glory of God. And you must know it is not the full glory, none of us can handle that. "No one can see my face and live" God said to Moses, and that is true. But there's a representational glory that comes down and fills that place. And it's a sense of the presence of God in Zion. A place where God is dwelling with man, and there it is, it's in Jerusalem, the City of God, so to speak.

And so you see again and again in Psalms, just look at the word Zion, in a concordance in Psalms and it's there again and again. It says, "Great is the Lord and," this is Psalm 48, "Great is the Lord and greatly be praised, and the city of our God, His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, it is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion in the far north, it's the city of the great King." So Zion is the city of the great King, and Jesus talks about that later when He says, "Do not swear by Jerusalem for it's the city of the great King. It's the place where the King lives." King David, the city of David, was the first to be connected with this idea of Zion, so there it is, Mount Zion, the city of the great King and within her citadels, God has made Himself known as a fortress. So it's the idea of God dwelling with the great King on Mount Zion, the place where God and man together dwell, it's Jerusalem in the Old Testament.

The problem is, the Jews did not keep the covenant. They did not obey the covenant of God, they broke the covenant by their idolatry, and by their sinfulness, and their oppression of the poor, they disobeyed God. And so therefore, in one of the most devastating chapters Ezekiel 10 and then again in Ezekiel 11, we have represented the movement of the glory of God away from Jerusalem. The glory of God moves away from the temple, goes to the threshold of the temple, pauses there, takes a while. It's like, I guess a chapter and a half before the journey finally is consummated, and basically, the idea is the glory of God has departed from Jerusalem, moves away from the temple, it moves to the threshold, it moves out of the city and up and gone. And it's a tragic thing, because of the wickedness of the Jews, because of their disobedience. Unless we Gentiles think we do any better, we wouldn't. The Jews were chosen so that they would represent us just like Adam did, and so we wouldn't have done any better than they. But because of their sin, the glory of God departed from Zion. This was perfectly and completely and forever in redemptive history consummated when the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah. "Rejoice O daughter of Zion, your King is coming to you riding on a donkey," it says, but they rejected Him by killing Him.

And Jesus predicted this, He knew this would happen and so therefore He laments over Jerusalem, and He says in Matthew 23, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Behold, your house is left to you desolate." That means empty. "For you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Matthew 24:1, "Then Jesus left the temple." Let me tell you something, there's a direct connection to Ezekiel 10 and 11 right there. Jesus walks out of the temple, Jesus was the glory of Israel. And so in effect at that moment, Jerusalem stopped being Mount Zion, stopped being the place where God and man together dwell. Stopped being the city of the great King. Does that mean there's no Zion anymore? No, there is a new Jerusalem. There is in effect the heavenly Jerusalem. Take a minute and... You've got your finger here in Isaiah 59, we'll go back to it, but look over at Galatians Chapter 4, for a minute.

Galatians 4 and Verse 21 and following, Paul is working with the Gentiles who want to become Jews, and he's saying what do you want to do that for? "Why do you want to labor under a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? Why would you want to do it?" "Tell me you who want to be under the law, aren't you aware of what the law says?" So he's reasoning with Gentiles who wants to take on the yoke, the burden of all of the stipulations and commandments and all that, of the law of Moses. And why would you want to do that? And he's arguing as a Jew in that regard, but here he says, "Tell me," Verse 21, "You who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as a result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants, one covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, for she is in bondage, or slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free and she is our mother. For it is written, 'Be glad, O barren woman who bears no children. Break forth and cry aloud, you have no labor pains. Because more are children of the desolate woman than of who has a husband.'"

So what are we talking about here? The Jerusalem that's below, it's not the real Jerusalem anymore. It's like Hagar, it's like the son of the slave woman in bondage to the law. But there is a Jerusalem that's above, and she is our mother, it's the heavenly Jerusalem. You get the same thing in Hebrews 12, take a minute and look over there. There, the author to Hebrews talks about Zion as well, and he says, in Hebrews 12:18, he says, "You have not come to a mountain that can be touched." That is so significant. Says, "You've not come to a mountain that can be touched," that's not the point, you've not come to a place where you can touch the rocks and the stones and compare and consider the walls like a physical Jerusalem.

"You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire to darkness, gloom and storm, to a trumpet blast with such a voice speaking words, that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded. If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned. The site was so terrifying that Moses said, 'I am trembling with fear.'" That's Mount Sinai, that's the Jerusalem that's below, that's the Jerusalem of bondage, that's the old way. He says, "It's not what you've come to here in the new covenant, but you have come to Mount Zion." See there it is, there is a Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, do you see it? So Hebrews 12:22 establishes the connection now between Mount Zion and a heavenly Jerusalem. There's a heavenly Mount Zion. It is the city of the living God. Jesus said that Zion is the city of the great King, and so it is, but who's the great King? It is Jesus. And where is Jesus ruling? Where is He reigning? Well, in Zion. Where's Zion? Is not the Jerusalem that's below. And so therefore, if you go back to Romans, you don't have to turn there, but just listen, you know what it says. The deliverer will come from Zion.

The new Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. "Yes," Isaiah said, "He's going to come to Zion," because that was his perspective. That's the way he was looking, but Paul says, "Let's go up to the next level, He's going to be coming from Zion, He's going to be sending forth His Spirit, He's going to remove that spirit of stupor from the Jews. The Deliverer will come from the heavenly Zion, and He's going to turn godlessness away from Jacob." Did Paul make a mistake? What do you think? Do you really think he made a mistake in reversing the order, or was he instead, establishing the Christ-centered nature of Israel's future? The heavenly nature. And you know what the future holds for Jerusalem. It says in Revelation 21, "Behold I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband." That's where Jerusalem is, "The Jerusalem that's below is a slave," says Paul in Galatians 4, "But the Jerusalem that's above, she's our mother and she gives birth to spiritual children." So the Deliverer comes from Zion.

What about the second phrase? "He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." Isaiah 59:20, if you look there right on the page, said, "He's going to come to those in Jacob who repent of their sins." Jews for Judaism says basically what's going to happen is the Messiah is going to wait in heaven until the Jews finally... To paraphrase what they say, Get their act together and start obeying the law. And once they finally and completely obey the law of Moses, then almost as a reward, they get their Messiah. Oh, how repugnant is that? And how wrong-headed? Will it ever happen friends? If we waited for 10 millennia, would they ever perfectly obey the law of Moses? Paul already established in Romans 3, that it was impossible. But Isaiah 59 says it very plainly. Look at Isaiah 59, you'll see how consistent Paul is here.

Right at the very beginning, Verse 1, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor His ear too dull hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear, for your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wicked things. No one calls for justice, no one pleads his case with integrity, they rely on empty arguments and speak lies, they conceive trouble and give birth the evil. They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider's web, whoever eats their eggs will die. When one is broken and adder is hatched, their cobwebs are useless for clothing. They cannot cover themselves, with what they make their deeds are evil deeds, the acts of violence are in their hands." They should sound familiar to anybody who knows Romans 3 very well, he directly quotes this. "Their feet are swift to shed blood, their feet rush into sin, they're swift to shed innocent blood, their thoughts are evil thoughts, ruin and destruction mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know." He's quoting that directly in Romans 3.

 Do you think he doesn't know Isaiah 59? He knows it better than any of us ever will, but he's reading, and he said, "What is Isaiah teaching about the people of God, they are enslaved to sin." Now, later in Isaiah 59, look at the middle of Verse 15, after he goes through more and more verses of this, I'm not going to read all of it, you can read it later, but he just makes it very obvious and clear that the Jews as a nation are enslaved to sin and there's nothing that can be done, they're just saturated in sin, just as we are. "There's no difference," Paul says, "Between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Everybody's the same, but the Jews were this way. Right in the middle of Verse 15, look what it says, "The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one. He was appalled that there was no one to intervene, so His own arm worked salvation for Him and His own righteousness sustained him." What is the perspective? God is looking down from heaven on His own people and He's saying, "There is no Savior there, there never will be. There is no one righteous, then there's no to Redeemer."

So where is the Redeemer going to come from? He's going to come from heaven, God if He's going to save these people, He's got to do it, He's got to come from heaven by the power of the Spirit and He's got to save His own people. And so "the deliverer will come from Zion, and He will turn godlessness away from Jacob." If he doesn't do it, it will never happen. We could be waiting for another two millennia, 10 millennia, it wouldn't matter, they would never of themselves turn away from sin, none of us would. Friends, salvation is from the Lord. That's what Paul's doing here with this quote. He's not making a mistake, he's going to a much higher level. And he's saying all Israel will be saved when God comes, when He moves, when the Deliverer comes from Zion, and when he turns godlessness away from Jacob, so godlessness will be turned away, and God will reign and He will rule. And the Zion that's above, she's going to give birth in one day to a whole nation of people.

Look at Isaiah 66 and we'll finish there. Isaiah 66 talks about this, and this is the language I think Paul was using in Galatians 4. Isaiah 66:7, "Before she goes into labor, she gives birth, before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son. Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day? Or a nation be brought forth in a moment yet, no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children." Do you see that? If you take that together with Galatians 4, the heavenly Zion is going to give birth to a nation at once. Now, what is that but the salvation of the Jews? What could that be but that God is going to take that spirit of stupor, that hardness away and in one day, so to speak, they will turn to their own Messiah. A nation will be born in a moment. That's revival friends, that's the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God. Does God have that kind of power? Does He have the kind of power to save a whole nation in an incredibly short amount of time, like a day? Yes, He can do it. No sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.

Verse 9, "'Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?' Says the Lord. 'Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?' Says your God. Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her all you who love her. Rejoice greatly with her, all you who mourn over her, for you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts. You will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance." This is talking about the restoration of the Jews, friends. And Zion will give birth to her children in one day, a nation will be born. Friends this is incredible. I think Isaiah is like this whole world that has to be discovered. We could go through it again and again and again, and miss all these kinds of details.

But let me tell you in summary, Paul didn't make a mistake. Our friends at Jews for Judaism, let's sit down and talk. Let's see if Paul really did understand the message of Isaiah 59. The message is you can't save yourself, you never will. None of us will, none of us can, but the Deliverer comes from Zion, from heaven, by the power of the Spirit of God, and He, by His sovereign power turns godlessness away from Jacob.

Now, what application do we take from this? First of all, just be in awe at the Scripture, just realize there's more there than you thought there was. Never imagine, when you come to a contradiction that there was something wrong in Paul's mind, and if only he knew what we know today he wouldn't have made that mistake. Heaven forbid, he knew exactly what he was talking about. What he was doing is he was establishing the sovereignty of God over salvation. And so, therefore, secondly, as you're praying for yourself, and you want your own forms of godlessness to be turned away, you've come to the right Savior. That's what the Redeemer comes to do. And so when you say, "Lord turn me away from anything that's ungodly," He has the power to do it, that's exactly the work He's doing all over the world, He has power over our own hearts, power over sin.

And again, be faithful and praying for the Jews. Pray for the day when these things will be completed, when these things will be fulfilled. You say, "Well what's the purpose in praying for things that God said He's going to do anyway? I want to pray for unpredictable things, I want to pray for things He hasn't said He's going to do." Listen, let's pray for what He said He's going to do. Jesus did that and the high priest in prayer, "Father, You gave them to me to save them, and I'll save them." There is no question that we should be praying for what God has promised He will do. Let's pray that all Israel will be saved. And then let's be active in Evangelism toward them. Let's see if we can seek out Jewish friends, neighbors, and others, and say, "Don't you want to be part of it? Well, I'm looking forward to sitting down at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Aren't you jealous yet? I'll keep talking till you all. I want to talk until you just want to be there through faith in Christ.

Close in prayer with me if you will. Father, we thank you for the depth of your Word, we thank you that we can be totally confident that there are no errors in the Scripture. We thank You that Paul chose to quote Isaiah 59, the way he did.

We come in Romans 11:25-32, the climax of the argument that Paul has been making concerning the nation of Israel, the Jewish people. And as I've been meditating on Romans 11, it's really been amazing the effect on my own heart and my own life. And I felt that some as we were traveling to Romania and we were in the airport in Milan, Italy and it was remarkable, the numbers of groups of Jewish men that I saw in that airport as we were waiting for the connecting flight. Actually we were fogged in so we're waiting a long time and I saw in one place, a group of about 15 or 20 men wearing wide brimmed hats and characteristic ear locks and beards and they were walking together. There was one that seemed older than the others and then there were some younger boys that were walking. I thought he might be a rabbi with a group of students around him. Later on as we were sitting in an area having some coffee and just waiting, I saw another Jewish man with his family and he was wearing a Yamaka and he was wearing a prayer shawl. And at a certain point, he stood up and he faced a wall. I assumed he was facing Jerusalem and as the Jews do praying in front of the Wailing Wall, this man began to pray, oblivious to any around him, not concerned what any might think about him.

And as I sat there and observed him and as I was just thinking about the Jewish men that I had seen before that it was interesting the thoughts that were rising up inside me as I observed that. First I felt, and I'm ashamed to admit it, but I felt a kind of a spiritual pride saying, "They don't even know Christ. God can't hear their prayers." All these kind of things. "If only they knew what I knew" this kind of thing. And I was checked in that by Romans 11. I was humbled as I was working on that exact message and thinking about all the ways that God humbles Gentiles in Romans 11 and warns us not to be arrogant or to boast over the fallen branches but rather to pray for them and show concern. It changed my heart, but then I was considering the text we're looking at today, this incredible mystery that we would not know any other way except that God had told us through this apostle, "All Israel will be saved." and I thought, wouldn't it be an incredible thing if it happened now. Wouldn't it be an incredible thing if that group of Jewish men sat down to study the prophets and saw suddenly for the first time Christ where they'd never seen him before? Wouldn't it be something if that Jewish man would have an Evangelist, would have somebody explain to him the Gospel and rather than responding with hardness he would respond with faith and trust in Christ?

Well, I believe that's exactly what the Bible says will happen at some point. I don't know if it's our generation, but I believe that Paul is revealing to us here that at some time in the future, the nation of Israel, will in large number, in a huge number in a remarkable way turn to faith in Christ. That's what it's revealing here.

Now, let's try to understand the context. Paul has been dealing in Romans 9-11 with the question, the bitter question for him as a Jewish man: why are the Jews almost overwhelmingly rejecting the Gospel whereas the Gentiles are so in such a wide and marvelous way receiving the Gospel? What does it mean? Has God's word failed to the Jews? He's dealing with this question and it seems that God is finished with the Jewish nation, seemed that way to many gentile onlookers since they were almost universally rejecting the Gospel of Christ. Also he saw, Paul did, that the Gentiles might have been feeling tempted to feel spiritually superior to the Jews, that they were better than them in some way. And so he's writing here in Romans 11 to deal with this.

And if I could give a kind of a two part summary to the whole chapter, Romans 11. I think first and foremost, Paul is saying that the rejection of Israel is not total. He says I'm an Israelite myself and there is in every generation, a remnant chosen by grace, there's always going to be some physical descendants of Abraham who will embrace Christ and believe in him. That's the first part, the rejection of Israel is not total.

Secondly, we find here in verse 25, the rejection of Israel is not permanent, but rather at some time, mysteriously in the future, God is going to work. So what we've seen is a movement in Romans 11, and it's quite remarkable that the restoration of Israel is possible. He says there, God is able to graft them in again. God is able. So it is possible for the Jews to come back to Christ. Secondly, he goes up to the next level and says, "Actually, it's probable." because he says, "If you Gentiles are wild by nature and you were grafted into an olive tree that is cultivated and it's not naturally yours, how much more readily will these the natural olive branches be grafted into their own olive tree." It is actually probable then that the Jews could be grafted in, but now he moves to the final level. It's not just possible, it's not just probable, it is guaranteed that God will do this very thing, all Israel will be saved, he will graft them in again this is the astounding mystery.

Look at verses 25 and 26, he says, "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery brothers so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved." Now, the first question I want to ask is, why does God reveal this mystery to us? Why does he tell us this? What are his reasons? Now, in the ancient world there were things called mystery religions. Paul wrote about them in Colossians 2, the kind of thing where you had to have some specialized spiritual knowledge, there was a hierarchy of spirituality and if you had that special knowledge you could make progress spiritually in this mystery religion. But actually, ironically, Christianity is a mystery religion, not in that way, but the Bible is filled with mysteries. Jesus said to his own disciples, "The mysteries of the kingdom have been made known to you but not to them." Speaking of the parables, Matthew 13. And here in... I'm sorry, in 1st Corinthians 2:7 Paul calls the Gospel a mystery ordained from before the creation of the world. He says in 1 Corinthians 2:7, "We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages for our glory." So the gospel is the secret and hidden mystery now being imparted.

Paul speaks of this mystery again in Romans 16:25-27. He's going to end this incredible epistle to the Romans again by hitting on this theme of the mystery. Romans 16:25 and following a doxology says, "Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ," listen, "according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith to the only God forever and ever be glory amen and amen." It's a mystery revealed. Christianity is a mystery religion and it's been revealed. Now, I want you to know it does not foster spiritual pride. Quite the opposite. All we have to do is humble ourselves and go to Jesus and say, "Please tell me what this means?" and God will not despise any honest and faith-filled request for wisdom, if we go to him and say, "Explain to me the scripture. Please let me know what this means." And you should do this. Romans 11 is filled with deep doctrine. There may be some things in it you don't understand. You just go humbly and simply to Christ and say, "Teach me through the Spirit what the Scripture means." That's what I did concerning verse 25. All of Christ's wisdom is available to the truly humble seeker, the one who really wants to know what Christ has to say.

Israel Has Experienced a Hardening in Part

And Jesus put it this way in Matthew 11:25, he said at that time, Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth for you have revealed these things to little children but hidden them from the wise and learned." God delights in doing that both in the revealing and the concealing. If you become like a little child you humble yourself he will reveal these secrets to you. Paul gives two reasons why God reveals this mystery right in his text verse 25 he says, "I do not want you to be ignorant to this mystery brothers so that you may not be conceited." So God reveals this through Paul to us, first, so that we will not be ignorant, and secondly, so that we will not be arrogant. He doesn't want us to be ignorant of what God is intending to do with the Jews, and he doesn't want us to be arrogant toward those Jews who have not yet come to faith in Christ. Well, that's the general setting at the table. Now, let's look at the mystery and try to unwrap it point by point.

It says in verse 25, "Israel has experienced a hardening in part." Now Israel, I believe as throughout this chapter, is referring to the nation of Israel, the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He's already addressed this issue of Israel's hardening, he's already talked about it in verse 7, look at Romans 11:7 it says, "What then what Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain but the elect did and the others were hardened." Now, the word hardening is 'porosis'. He's speaking of the hardening of their hearts. Simply put, I think the hardening of the Jews is their inability, their refusal to come to Christ when clearly confronted with the biblical evidence that Jesus is in fact the Messiah. Clearly confronted with the biblical evidence that he fulfills all these prophecies. There's a hardness that has come over them in part. It says, Jesus speaking to the Jews of his own day in John 5:39-40 he says to them, "You diligently study the Scriptures, because you think that by them you possess eternal life, these are the scriptures that testify about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." That's the hardness, the 'porosis' that's come over their hearts.

Also 2nd Corinthians 3:14-15 speaks of it. Speaking of the Jews Paul writes, "Their minds were dull for to this day, the same veil remains when the old covenant is read it has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts." They can't see Christ in the Old Testament, that's the nature of the 'porosis'. We've also learned very mysteriously and very difficulty for some to accept that this hardening has come from God himself, it's actually God that has brought this hardening on their hearts. Look at verse 8, "as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see, ears so that they could not hear, to this very day." And we talked about that at that point. Jesus... John put it this way in John 12:39 and following, "For this reason they," speaking of the Jews, "For this reason they could not believe because as Isaiah says elsewhere, 'he has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts so that they can neither see with their eyes nor understand with their hearts nor turn and I would heal them.' Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him." Isaiah spoke about Jesus but the Jews couldn't see it because of this blindness, because hardness that's come over.

Now we see at last, the joyful ramifications of that difficult doctrine that it is God that brought the spirit of stupor. What do I mean? God himself gave the hardening and therefore God himself has the power to take it away. He gave it and he can take it away any time he chooses and that's exactly what Paul says he's going to do. He's going to take away that hardness so that all Israel can be saved. Now you might think, Why would God do that? Well, he explains that throughout the chapter but there's a beautiful illustration of this, I think, in the Book of Daniel. You remember the story about Daniel and his interactions with the potentate of the Babylonian empire, King Nebuchadnezzar, what an incredible tyrant this man was. What a force of will and domination that forced the Babylonians into a worldwide, world conquering empire. And at one point, he's boasting in his arrogance over the city of Babylon, that he's built.

And so God sends him a warning in a dream, and in the dream this is what the warning is. In Daniel 4:16-17 the angel says concerning Nebuchadnezzar, "Let his mind be changed from that of a man and let him be given the mind of an animal till seven times pass by for him. The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men." That's the lesson, God rules. And you have your kingdom because I gave it to you. And so he decreed seven years of mental insanity for this man. Seven years in which he thought he was an animal. How humbling is that? He's out eating grass like an animal for seven years. At the end of the seven years, Nebuchadnezzar was permitted to come to his senses only because God removed the insanity that clouded his normal reason. The seven years were mandated by God, the time was set by God's wisdom and power. It was announced four times, twice in the dream, once in Daniel's interpretation, and then once by the angel who brought the judgment finally. The seven years of insanity were fixed and not before that time elapsed did God permit Nebuchadnezzar to come to his senses and repent from his sin.

I see a similar situation here with the hardening of the Jews. God has set it. There's a certain amount of time. And at some point my friends, at some point he's going to remove it just like he did in Nebuchadnezzar's case. And what is that time? Well, he doesn't give days, months, years, decades, centuries. It's not a time in that sense. He doesn't tell us how long it's going to be but he does tell us what's going to happen. And then the hardness will be removed. It says, "Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in." This gives the time extent of the hardening. God has measured out how long he will wait to remove Israel's hardening. He measures it not in calendar time here but in prophetic event time. This is the next thing that must happen and then the hardening will be removed. Now, I believe what this is talking about is the fullness of the Gentiles, the mass or the greater part or the great number of the Gentiles turning to Christ. I think some people get mathematically accurate saying the last single solitary gentile would be converted and then all of the Jews will be converted, etcetera. That may well be but the word just means fullness, the fullness of the Gentiles is going to come in and then you're going to get the fullness of the Jews coming in.

Until the Full Number of the Gentiles Comes In

So that still I think allows the possibility of some development even after this happens. It doesn't mean every single solitary person who's going to be saved gentile and then every single solitary person Jew and then the end comes. It may be that way, but it doesn't have to be that way. The word simply means fullness. And so what does it mean? Well, God has chosen people, he has his elect, and they're in every tribe, and language, and people, and nation and Jesus has said, "This Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come." It says in the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul says that God has determined the time set for the nations and the exact places where they should live. And so he's got his elect people among the gentile, scattered all over the world, and he's sending out missionaries with beautiful feet and they're going to the ends of the Earth and they're bringing the gospel to unreached people groups. That's what Lottie Moon helps pay for. Oh, be generous, pray and be generous because we want to see the Gospel speed to the ends of the earth to the places where people have never heard the name of Christ.

And so we're sending out missionaries. Southern Baptist Churches all over the country are sending out missionaries. There are people all over the world involved in the great commission work to bring the fullness of the Gentiles in and so we know from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation they will come. It says in Revelation 7:9, "After this, I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation and tribe and people and language standing before the throne and in front of the lamb. They were wearing white robes and they were holding palm branches in their hands and they were saying, Salvation belongs to the Lord and to the lamb." That is the fullness of the Gentiles, friends. And Israel has experienced the hardening in part until that comes in, until that harvest is brought in.

Now, God has measured this out. He knows how long it's going to be. Now, he's not told us in years or exactly the date that it will happen but he's told us that it is going to happen and friends we're seeing it going on right in front of our eyes, it's a marvelous thing. And isn't it amazing that for the second time in redemptive history, God is making the Jews wait until something happens with the gentiles and when that thing happens with the Gentiles then the Jews get their inheritance. It happened concerning the promised land, do you remember God told Abraham that the promised land would be his in Genesis 15, but not yet. Not yet, he couldn't get it yet. Why not? Well, it says in Genesis 15:16, "In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." The fullness of the Amorites sin isn't complete. When that fullness of sin is complete, then I will bring Joshua with the sword and they will clear out the promised land and in come the Jews to take the promised land. Isn't that a marvelous thing? Now for the second time, God is waiting for something to happen among the Gentiles for the Jews then to get their promised inheritance. The first time it was the sin of the Amorites. Now it's the salvation of the gentiles. The fullness of the Gentiles will come in and then it will happen. All Israel be saved.

And So All Israel Will Be Saved

Now comes this mystery. What does it mean, "All Israel will be saved"? Dear friends, this is a mystery so deep that you would not have gained it by observation. Maybe some of you enjoy reading mystery Sherlock Homes or something like that. I remember a number of years ago there was a movie out called 'Clue'. Do you know the game 'Clue'? And so, they had Professor Plum and all these kind of things and what they told us was that there are actually different endings to the movie in different geographical regions. Well, finally one critic looked at it and said, "There's a fundamental flaw in the movie. If there are different endings, that means nothing up to that point leads in any definite direction, and so you can be watching one way and not figure it out. But one of the joys of a mystery is to try to look at the clues and see where it ends and who did it." That's what you're always trying to work out. See if you can figure it out.

Well you couldn't with that movie, because there were six different endings. And so why waste your time? Because all of them could fit to each one. Well, that's the nature of a mystery, and that's what the mystery writer does, he's assembling clues that point in a certain direction. Friends, you could not have figured this out by observation. If you had gone around and just observed how it is with the Jews and the Gospel all around the world, if you had done research looking back in history, you would not have come to this conclusion, that all Israel would be saved. Actually you'd come to the opposite conclusion. This is a mystery that we would not know if God had not revealed it to us.

A simple and mathematical question comes to us, "What are the odds, friends, what are the odds that the overwhelming majority of Jews in a single generation, if not every single solitary Jew, maybe, but the overwhelming majority would suddenly and amazingly convert to Christianity in one generation?" If you don't know the answer, go talk to a Jewish friend, go talk to a Jewish rabbi, ask him that question. What's he going to tell you? Zero. No chance, it will not happen. But God said it will, and friends, it will. Isn't that wonderful? God doesn't play mathematical probability games, it all has to do with what His will is, and He has told us what His will is, and this is going to happen.

Now, notice how He introduces it, "Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved." What are those words "And so," mean? Well, there was a strong link to the fullness of the Gentiles coming in, and Israel getting saved. How does it work? Well, the word "And so" in the Greek means "In this way, or in this manner." This is how God's going to do it. When God gets finished with His massive work among the Gentiles, when this revival or whatever it is that happens in every tribe, and language, and people, and nation happens, then the Romans 11 jealousy is going to kick in among the Jews. They're going to say, "Wait a minute, we're left out. We're left out. They're sitting at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven, and we're left out." And there's a spirit of jealousy that God's going to kindle inside of them. And so in this way, all Israel will be saved.

Now, what does it mean "All Israel"? And I've already told you what I believe about the word 'Israel'. I think it's talking about the ethnic Jews, I think it's talking about the physical descendants of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. That's what I think it means. Now, what does it mean? I don't think it can mean every single solitary physical descendant of Abraham who has ever lived will end up in Heaven. Or conversely that there will be no Jews in Hell. I don't think that's what it's saying. Friends, if that's what it's saying, if that's what it's saying, then why does Paul introduced this whole topic in Romans 9-11 with these words, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart"? Romans 9, "For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people." Generations of Jews have heard and rejected the Gospel and have died. And Jesus said, "You will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins."

And He said in Matthew 23 to the Scribes and Pharisees, He said, "You snakes, you brood of vipers, how long will you escape being condemned to Hell?" It cannot mean that there will be no Jews condemned, it doesn't mean that. Other people like John Calvin, and some reform theologians, believe that all it's saying is that all the elect will be saved, and that Israel equals elect. But I don't think that's what it means, with all due respect to John Calvin. I appreciate his scholarship, it takes a lot of courage to go against him, but I think we have to do that here. I don't think that he's saying that, he's revealing a mystery here, something we wouldn't have known any other way. And it doesn't fit with the context. Look what it says, "Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in." Israel, Gentiles. They're the Jews, friends. And they've experienced the hardening, and so therefore, that's the Israel that's going to be saved. We're talking about the Jews, not about the elect.

Other people think it means the elect among the Jews. But friends, we already knew that. We already knew back in verse 7. It said, that what Israel sought to obtain, it did not. The elect obtained it, the others were hardened, we already learned that. No, he's talking about something so big, he's talking about a big cymbal crash crescendo at the end of redemptive history. Something so huge that it's like life from the dead. Look what he says in verse 15, "If their," referring to the Jews, "If their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be, but life from the dead." Like that, it's so exciting. It's going to be something so dramatic, it'd be like going to a funeral and seeing a dead person sit up, and you're like, "Wow." It's terrifying, it's shocking, you would never imagine. It's going to be like life from the dead, it's going to be something noteworthy, something really quite shocking and amazing.

So I don't think it's saying that just the elect among the Jews will continue to trickle in, that's not what it's saying. I think what it's saying is that God is going to work in a single generation of Jews such a mighty thing, that they're going to turn to Christ. And it's what it says, "will be saved." We're not learning a new way to be saved now. They're going to be saved the way everybody gets saved. "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." He doesn't have a different Gospel for the Jews, it's the same Gospel for all of us. And so they're going to be saved the same way we get saved, by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Isn't that marvelous? And so in an incredible way this Jewish nation is going to turn and embrace Christ.

"Saved" must mean what it has meant throughout Romans. Romans 5:9, it says, "Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him." Can there be a saving from the wrath of God apart from the blood of Christ? No, there is nothing. There's nothing can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus. And that's true for Jews as well, they're going to be saved by repentance of faith. We also learned in Romans 10:9-10, it says, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with the heart you believe and are justified, and it is with the mouth that you confess and are saved." That's the same for the Jews as it will be for us, as it has been for us, no difference. So what is it teaching? That Jews are going to do that, they're going to believe in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, they're going to confess that Jesus is Lord. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

This is an astonishing truth. Picture it my friends, picture that group of Jews in the Milan airport, characteristically dressed. There's a picture of Jews on the cover of your bulletin, go ahead and look there, look at the picture. Can you imagine the Jewish men and women turning to Christ, repenting of their sin, listening to those with the beautiful feet that bring the Gospel of salvation, standing there at the Wailing Wall, clinging to Judaism, and then suddenly they see Christ? What an incredible thing. None of them will be saved apart from the preaching of the Gospel. But suddenly the same Gospel which has been being preached for 2,000 years, hundreds of thousands of times, will now miraculously bear fruit. Isn't that incredible? All Israel will be saved.

And then he supports it mysteriously from prophecy. There is so much in this that I couldn't handle it today, this morning. So, I'm going to share more thoughts about why Paul rearranges the quote from Isaiah. I will do that tonight. There's just too much. And he does rearrange it, he actually reverses it, exactly the opposite of what Isaiah says. Look what it says in verse 26-27, "So all Israel will be saved, as it is written, 'The deliverer will come from Zion, he will turn godlessness away from Jacob, and this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.'" He reverses Isaiah 59:20. Now listen to what Isaiah 59:20 says. "And a redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn away from transgression." Both of those are opposite. Why does he change it? Come tonight, listen, okay? But I'll say this, I believe he changes the quote. The Jews for Judaism website were all over Paul for this, saying he's twisting Scripture, he's supporting this thing with a verse that isn't even in the Old Testament, he reversed it. Why did he do it? Come tonight, I'm not going to say it now, but I will say the reason that he does it is to emphasize God's sovereignty in the Jew's salvation, to emphasize God's sovereignty.

Zion has changed, it's heavenly now, and the redeemer is going to come from Zion to the earthly Zion, to the Jews. And he's not going to come to Jews who repent of their sins, and then He comes as a reward. But rather he is going to do the turning away from sin. He's emphasizing the sovereignty of God. Paul knew the Old Testament better than any of his modern day detractors, I can assure you, he knew exactly what he was doing. We'll talk about it tonight.

But it says He's going to turn godlessness away from Jacob. Now, what do we mean by this? I believe there's two different kinds of Jewish godlessness, there is religious godlessness, and then there is atheistic or secular godlessness. Christ can handle both of them. Christ has the power to turn both of them away from the hearts of the Jews. What is religious godlessness? Well, it's thinking you can come to God the Father without God the Son. It's thinking that you don't need Jesus, but through your own obedience to the law of Moses by establishing your own righteousness, you can work out a righteousness sufficient for Judgment Day, that is religious godlessness. And Jesus said, "He who has the Son has life, He who does not have the Son of God does not have life." If you don't have the Son, you don't have the Father. You can't brush aside the Son and try to embrace the Father, He will not have it.

Psalm 2 says, He will... He said to His son, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool for your feet." Nobody can brush aside Jesus. And so, there is religious godlessness in those that think they can be saved apart from the work of Christ, it can't be done. But then there's secular or atheistic godlessness, and that's just people that aren't religious at all, they have no real interest in the law of Moses or any of that, they are seeking to make a living, to be powerful, successful, prosperous in whatever way they choose, and they have therefore become idolaters because they're focused on earthly things, just like Esau did, selling everything for a bowl a soup. They are living for this world, and power and prestige in this world, it is godlessness. Jesus has the power to come from Heaven by the power of the Holy Spirit, and turn both forms of godlessness away from the Jews.

Hallelujah. He can do it in our hearts too. We're focused here on the Jews, and he is going to do that, he's going to turn godlessness away from Jacob. And verse 27, "This is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins." Matthew 1:21, the first time anyone ever heard the name Jesus, we'll talk about it, God willing, next week. But it was Joseph who was told by the angel, "you are togive Him the name Jesus, because," He will what? "He will save His people from their sins." Isn't that beautiful? Jesus has that kind of power. This is the covenant, this is the covenant that's not been fulfilled, and that is to save the Jews from their sins.

The new covenant, Jeremiah 31 says this, "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." Did you hear that? "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah and with the house of Israel." Those are the Jews, friends, He's going to make a new covenant with the Jews. We're just grafted into that new covenant, friends, we're grafted into the Jewish new covenant. It was made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. "It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people." That's the new covenant, He's going to take away their sin, and everything sin has done to them. We get grafted into that, Book of Hebrews Chapter 8 and Chapter 10, we get the new covenant, and we are drinking from that fountain, full forgiveness of sins.

But it was meant and made for the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Oh, there's all kinds of support for this. Paul didn't have to reach for an obscure passage in Isaiah and twist it around to get it to say, there is word all over the Old Testament prophets of the restoration of the Jews. And I think the ultimate restoration is not just that they would come back 40,000 strong or some trickle amount back in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and take up servitude dwelling places under Gentile overlords in the promised land. That's not the restoration, that's not what's spoken of in Isaiah 60, when it says of Zion, "Arise and shine, for your light has come." That's the restoration, it is spiritual restoration, restored to God Almighty through the work of Jesus Christ. And there's all kinds of prophecies that predicted, one I printed right in your bulletin, look at it.

Zechariah 12:10. So vital, because here is the remedy to the spirit of stupor of Romans 11:8. God gave them a spirit of stupor. And in Zechariah 12:10, God takes it away, He takes away the spirit of stupor and gives them a different spirit instead. Look what it says in Zechariah 12:10, "I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on Me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, and they will grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son." Christ will remove the spirit of stupor, and a spiritual blindness, instead He'll pour on the Jews a spirit of grace and supplication, and as a people, they will look to Christ for salvation, and they will cry out to Him and they will mourn for Him. The one they themselves pierced on the cross, and they will cry for Him, and mourn for Him, and love Him, and embrace Him, and believe in Him.

They will weep and wail for the wasted generations of Jews that rejected their greatest son. They will weep and wail because of their sins, and they will yearn for Christ, and they will find in Christ a warm salvation, a welcome back like the father and the prodigal son. And Christ will save them, He will not turn aside any that come to Him in repentance of faith, He will embrace them, and forgive them, and justify them, and friends, graft them back into their own olive tree. This is what the prophets say.

Now, there are two different ways, therefore, that God views the Jewish nation now. They are in one sense enemies, and they are in another sense beloved. Verse 28 and 29, it says, "As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account. But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and His call are irrevocable." The Jews opposed Paul every step of the way. They were Gospel enemies in Paul's day. They fought him that he would not preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, they abused him, they opposed him. It's continued on for generations, even to this present day. There are some Jews that use their positions of power and influence, even in America, to make it difficult to evangelize. It is true, they are Gospel enemies. As far as the Gospel is concerned, he says, they are enemies. But as far as election is concerned, they're beloved on account of the patriarchs.

There are two different ways of looking at their situation, they are Gospel enemies, but they're beloved. Friends, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus should prove one thing, the Gospel has the power to turn enemies into friends. He can transform a bitter entrenched Gospel enemy to a friend just like that. What God can do for one person on the road to Damascus, He can do to a whole nation, He can do that, He has that power. And so God's gifts and His calling are irrevocable, He's not taking them back. And so that brings us back, friends, to the original question that Paul was wrestling with in Romans 9, concerning the Jews has God's word failed? Answer, no. He is right on top of it, He knows exactly what He's doing. There's a purpose in everything He's doing. God's word has not failed, His gifts and His calling are irrevocable, and He will accomplish His ends and His purposes in the end.

Now, what are His ends and purposes? And with this we finish. What is God's final end? What is His ultimate purpose in all of this? Well, His ultimate goal, friends, is His own glory in human salvation, that He would be glorified in the salvation of sinners from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation, both Jew and Gentile, that He would be glorified. Look what He says in verse 30-32, "Just as you, who were at one time disobedient to God, have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience. So they too have now become disobedient, in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience, so that He may have mercy on them all."

Oh, what a glorious and deep concept that is. To God be the glory, great things He had done, that is the end of the Gospel. That God has worked in history in such a way that both Gentiles and Jews have stopped mouths and can say nothing other than, "To God be the glory. He had mercy on me, the sinner. I was saved by grace." God intents full glory in their salvation for Himself. And so He has worked in such a way that there's nothing left but for us to boast in Christ. As it says in 1 Corinthians 1, "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world, and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are. So that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, 'Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.'"

So God had a plan for that, and the Scripture here says that God bound us all into disobedience. It's a strange expression, but the same word is used of the disciples when they're fishing, and their nets were bursting full of fish in Luke 5:6. It says, "When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish and their nets began to break." God has enclosed the whole human race into disobedience, into sin. Now, how did He do that without enticing us to sin, as James says He doesn't do? Well, I know He does it, I don't know how to put it all together, but I know this, He has enclosed us in such a way that what is truly in our hearts, our own rebellion, our own sin, will get revealed and displayed, so that when we get saved we will be praising and glorifying God alone for His mercy to us.

And so, therefore, Gentiles are bound up into disobedience through their terrible idolatries, and their orgies, and their selfishness, and their materialism, and all of the stuff that the pagan gods and goddesses, and all the stuff that Gentiles did. He bound them up into that, so that we are silenced, saved by mercy. And then He bound up the Jews in generations of hardening, so they can't see their own Messiah, but instead think they can earn their salvation through their own law keeping. He bound them into disobedience so that He can have mercy on them all. This incredible plan of God.

And when we get to Heaven, friends, when we're saved, when it's all said and done, when it's finished, we will be done with the wretched theme of ourselves. We won't be thinking about ourselves anymore. God isn't bringing you to Heaven, as John Piper put it, to make much of you. He's rather bringing you to Heaven and freeing you from self-focus, so at last you can eternally make much of Him, and you will, if you're saved. And so will the Jews make much of Him, for God has bound all of them over to disobedience, so that He can have mercy on them all. Saved by mercy.

And notice the symbiotic relationship, Jews and Gentiles alike had to do it. The Jews' disobedience enabled Christ to be crucified, releasing a Gospel for the Gentiles, so that they could be saved. Now, God's mercy to the Gentiles makes them jealous so that they are in the end, going to be saved too. Jews and Gentiles together alike necessary for God's incredibly deep redemptive plan. Just as you who were at one time disobedient have now received mercy as a result of the Jews' disobedience, so they then now have become disobedient, so that they can receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you.

Take it home, read it, look over it. It's complex, but what He's saying is that the Jews' and Gentiles' disobedience alike is essential to God's salvation plan. So that in the end, we will stand up in Heaven, and we'll say, "To God, and to God alone be the glory. How great is your mercy to me, how great is your mercy that you overlooked my sin, that you covered me by the grace and the blood of Christ, how great is your mercy that you saved me." We said while we had time on earth, while there was time, we said, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner," and He had mercy on you, didn't He? And so that will be your theme in glory, for God has bound all men over to disobedience, so that He may have mercy on them all.

And He says in another place, Romans 9:15-16, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God, the one who has mercy."

What application can we take from this? Just humble yourself before God, realize that if you're saved, you're saved because of grace and mercy, because Jesus was merciful to you, and did not treat you as your sins deserved. Therefore, can I urge you to exalt His mercy to you personally? Talk a lot about it. Say, "God doesn't treat me as my sins deserve, He's not giving me what I deserve. I'm here by grace and by mercy alone. Only by His grace by the blood of Jesus do I even stand alive today." It really drives out a spirit of bitterness and complaining if you do that. Exalt His mercy to you personally.

Thirdly, accept the mysteries of God's saving plan for the Jews. Just believe this is true. Start thinking about a world in which huge numbers of Jews will someday come to Christ. Just think about that, it's going to happen. So, orient yourself to that, accept it, anticipate the glories of Christ's kingdom in which Jews and Gentiles alike are going to be praising Jesus for dying on the cross for them. Never doubt for a moment God's power to bring great joy out of terrible providences and circumstances. God is right on top of history. Nothing happens apart from His marvelous plan. And so you may be going through death, suffering, bereavement, pain of all kinds, financial difficulties, physical problems, and you may be wondering about the goodness and power of God. Never wonder, God knows exactly what He's doing, He is powerful and strong. And therefore trust God in whatever circumstance you're in.

And finally, be active in evangelism. I hope as a result of our study now in Romans 9-11, if you're witnessing, sharing the Gospel, and someone says, "Oh, I'm Jewish," like that should end the discussion, oh no, that begins the discussion. "Oh good, you're Jewish. Good, let's talk about the prophets. Let's talk about the Gospel." Don't think, "Oh, that ends it, there's no chance." Of course there's a chance. God has promised someday all Israel will be saved. Close with me in prayer.